Cathy breathes in the smell of the antiseptic, looks at the fluorescent lights above and opens her mouth.

‘Evan,’ she says, not looking at him.

‘You know where he is,’ he says softly, and she cries even more.

One path leads left, and one right.

She turns right.

‘On holiday,’ she starts. She feels no relief, despite this confession having bubbled inside her for weeks. She doesn’t want to tell just anyone.

‘Right …’ Evan says.

‘Frannie killed someone,’ Cathy says. Three small words. Three big words. The truth.

‘What the fuck?’ Evan says. ‘What the actual fuck?’ His mouth is parted, his eyes round and unblinking. ‘What?’ He takes two steps away from them, like they are monsters.

But they are not monsters, she thinks sadly, checking on the French bulldog’s breathing. Everything is unreal to Cathy, a poisonous pit of fighting snakes in her stomach. ‘It wasn’t malicious. We did what we had to do,’ she tries to say.

Evan is still staring at them, his hands in the exact same position they were when the words left her mouth, up by his hair.

‘She hit a man with her car. It was an accident,’ Joe says, and she’s so glad he’s there with her, her brother, to try to bend the story, as tough and unyielding as metal, into what it really was. Into love and loyalty and – anyway – into the only viable option that they had. Wasn’t that the case? They’re not wrong, are they?

Evan has brought his hand down to wipe at his forehead, which is now covered in sweat. ‘I mean …’ he says. ‘I didn’t think …’

His expression changes as he looks at Cathy. She must not have the words for anything, at the moment, because she can’t name his expression. All she knows is that his face has changed. From something to something else.

Suddenly, she’s frightened. Here, she and Joe, alone with this man.

‘How … how could you?’ Evan says.

‘You don’t understand,’ Cathy says. Can she ever explain it to anybody? The dead-of-the-night phone call. The blood. Her fear for her sister, greater than her fear would be for herself. Their long, shared history, Rosie … everything in Cathy’s life led up to that moment, or that’s how she feels anyway.

She meets Evan’s eyes. ‘You just – what? You just … you what, you hid a body?’ He directs his questions to her, and Cathy can understand why. She has shocked him more than Joe ever could.

‘We didn’t have a choice,’ she says.

‘I just –’

‘You can’t tell anyone,’ Joe says loudly.

Evan still says nothing. A hand over his mouth, thumb rubbing at his chin.

‘Frannie rang me,’ Cathy says, jumping to explain. ‘It was after one o’clock in the morning. She’d hit somebody. She was so frightened she’d go to prison – she was on the wrong side of the road, she just forgot, she just forgot they drive on the right.’