Beth had wanted to stay, and there had been a bitter argument when they’d broken the news of their imminent departure, her small face made ruddy and strange with the force of her angry weeping, but in the end, their course was set. They said their goodbyes, dropped the rental car at the airport and flew home.

That relief lingered in the days that followed. The cool spaces of their house, the breeze rustling through the vegetation in the garden, it was a balm after the arid heat, the airlessness of France.

There was a muteness though. Things that had happened were not spoken of. Occasionally, Mark might ask: ‘Any word from Val?’ or one of them might wonder aloud about how the Cattos were getting on, but for the most part they didn’t discuss it. Avoidance of the issue was their unspoken policy, both of them shying away from the fissure in their holiday – those awful words he had spoken.

Once, during dinner, they had seen a fox run through the garden, pausing in the middle of the lawn, brazen in the daylight, and Mark had said, ‘God, remember those boar though?’ and all at once they were reliving the night, the car skidding to a halt, blood on the bumper, and then Guy clutching his head. Mark still obsessed over the sound in Guy’s throat. He confessed to Abi one evening, the two of them sitting on the patio, enjoying a bottle of Viognier in the last rays of the evening sun, that he woke in the middle of the night sometimes, thinking he could hear the rattle of Guy’s breathing in the room with them, the wet gasps jolting him out of sleep, frightening him in the darkness. They were both stretched out on their loungers at the time, a couple of feet apart. Mark had one arm raised, his hand slung across his forehead, and it was this hand that he reached out to Abi, grasping hers in a tight grip, his eyes turned to hold her gaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she felt the solemnity of the words and knew he was referring to his behaviour the evening of the accident. That terrible thing he had said.