‘Sorry,’ Cathy says again to Joe.

‘Do you need to take some time off?’ Joe says. ‘We can’t be killing cats … or anything.’

Cathy looks at him. They both hear the unsaid else.

‘No. I’m fine. I just wasn’t thinking straight, was rushing yesterday. It’s not because of …’ Cathy turns away from him, straightening some of the prescription food they have out on the shelves. ‘It’s not because of him,’ she says over her shoulder. And then, to change the subject, he assumes, she adds: ‘We need more Hills i/d.’

Joe puts the prescriptions in the drawer, ready for Frannie to hand out tomorrow, and tries not to wonder if there are any others he should double-check. Maybe he should just go through some of the ones in the system, just in case …

He turns to ask Cathy if he should, and that’s when he sees it.

Search being narrowed in woods for Verona missing Brit, is flashing up on BBC Breaking News on their reception television. Joe’s stomach is in his feet. His body seems to still, pointing to it in slow motion. Cathy hasn’t seen it yet, is looking at the packets of food and a list she has on a clipboard, and he watches her clock his sudden movement, sees her blink once, twice, everything moving like sand through an egg timer, slow and granular in the detail, and then she sees it too.

Sweat blooms across her as she reads it. Joe sees it happen, little droplets across her collarbones like she’s exercising. Her cheeks go red in two distinct patches, and then pale immediately, like lovers whose lips never quite meet.

‘They know,’ Joe whispers. He wants to cry out, but he can’t. He can’t catch his breath.

Adrenaline is rushing up and down his arms, making him shivery, like he has the flu.

‘Stop that,’ Cathy says gently to him, and he looks down to see he’s rubbing at his arms.

‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ he says. ‘It’s a matter of time.’

She comes closer to him. ‘I don’t know. Nothing,’ she says. ‘We can’t do anything.’

‘I’ve done enough of that. Nothing.’

‘I know. I know. I know,’ she says, and she reaches for him, and he remembers, he remembers the same gesture when she slapped her palm into his. The day of Rosie’s funeral. They’d both thrown a white rose on to her pale coffin. Cathy’s right hand had held the flower, her left had slapped his, and he’d immediately enfolded it, like a stone being absorbed completely into a still pool, and thrown his flower too. They’d stood there, holding hands, watching the petals float down, saying nothing. He clasps her hand as it lands on his.

‘This is fucked,’ he says. ‘This is so fucked.’

‘It’s not. It’s not,’ she says. ‘They haven’t swabbed our DNA.’

‘So, what – we’ll go on the run if they ask for it?’

‘I’m just saying – we might not be suspects,’ she says. ‘We don’t know where.’