‘Okay, Ms Plant,’ the barrister says in a bored tone. ‘We won’t redo the oath but can you please reconfirm your name for the courtroom record?’

I nod, ready this time. I turn directly to the jury. ‘Catherine Plant,’ I say.

42.

Then

Cathy

Tom has been texting. And now – just like that – he has called.

‘At work,’ she says, in response to his asking where she is.

‘You work a lot,’ he says. ‘Like – a lot. Want to come out with me instead?’

She closes the screen on her computer, where she’s been researching Italian planning. She can’t seem to find an answer on how long they have until they start digging. Weeks, months, years. Italy concerns itself less with bureaucracy and timescales than England.

‘That’s the job,’ she says, then clears the history on her computer, turning her attention to him.

Cathy has never been on a second date in her life. She can’t believe he wants to. She could leave work, she thinks, looking around the back office. She could leave that prescription. She could hand over that German shepherd to the night nurses …

‘I know,’ Tom says now, a long, drawn-out noise, a pleasant one. ‘I could come to help. I’m a brilliant vets’ assistant, I promise. I’m unflappable.’

Cathy lets a laugh escape. ‘That must be nice.’

She walks into the empty reception, still on the phone. Frannie’s gone home now – she works three long days per week, when Paul goes to nursery and their parents’, and two short.

Rain moves down the plate-glass frontage so fast it looks like it’s shivering. Wheat will soon be harvested in the field opposite. Autumn is almost upon them, this weird, awful summer soon to be in the past, in the season before, and then in the season before that.

Who knows how long they’ve got left before they find the body? How many seasons – two or three maybe? They’re on borrowed time. It makes her fatalistic.

‘Come be my assistant,’ she says to Tom.

‘Already on my way,’ he says, and Cathy hears the chink of his keys in his hand.

She goes into the staff room and, right there on the table, as though it’s a message from above, is Frannie’s ASOS parcel, still not yet posted back. She hesitates, then carries it into the toilet cubicle, undresses, unwraps the dress and slides it over her body. Her hair has become static where the dress touched it, and she smooths it down, looking at herself. Where the dress swamped Frannie, it flatters Cathy. The sleeves are billowy, the dark material swirling around her feet. It’s casual but chic, a deep, almost-black patterned with autumn leaves. She pulls the ochre drawstrings around the middle and – ah – there she is. A Cathy with a waist emerges from the depths. She takes a photo of herself and sends it to Frannie, saying, Can I keep it? Frannie replies immediately: Of course! It’s on me! Stunning. Cathy stares at those texts, those sisterly, generous texts, and at herself in the dress, and tries to grasp and keep hold of these relics of normality.