‘I want you to be able to decide what to do.’

‘Then you’d better tell me the whole story,’ she says, turning to him, her hair still mussed from sleep.

He pauses for a second, thinking. Evan already knows. Doesn’t he owe it to her?

‘Okay,’ he says, slowly, painfully.

And so he tells her. The whole thing. Frannie, Verona, the blood, the body.

At first there is recognition when he says his sister’s name, but then, after that, Lydia’s face seems to fade, like a message written in sand being slowly, slowly, slowly erased by the tide. By the end of the story, there is nothing left. And that’s when he knows. Lydia is easy to predict, lives her life by rules she’s had to construct to make sense of what happened to her. And this will breach one of those rules, Joe is sure.

Nevertheless, his heart full of hope, he stares at her and says, ‘I hope I’ve done the right thing in telling you.’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispers, looking at him, eyes huge and sad, basset-hound eyes. ‘Joe. How could you do this?’ Still, she doesn’t raise her voice.

‘No – I … she … what could I do?’

Lydia wraps the duvet more tightly around herself and shivers. ‘Joe.’

‘What?’ he says.

‘Nothing,’ she says softly, looking beyond him, somewhere, in another room. Thinking, he supposes, in that way that she does.

‘What do you think?’ he asks plainly.

She meets his eyes and tries to form her face into a smile, but it’s a hopeless imitation. ‘I get it,’ she says thickly, sadly. ‘Yeah. I get it. It’s family, right?’

‘Right,’ Joe says quietly, not sure what to think, what to make of her expression, of her rigid body language, of her eyes.

‘Joe?’ she says, a few minutes later.

‘Yeah?’

‘Is the body in the woods that they’re developing?’

Evan’s hands are shaking in surgery the next day, though Joe thinks it ought to be his. The police are searching the woods where Will is. They know, they know, they know. They’re going to find the body, covered in his and his siblings’ DNA, unless he does something. But what?

Lydia was still strange this morning, like somebody with a hangover or morning sickness. Removed from him. Existing mostly in her head, making coffee in silence, taking ages to answer him. Joe went in early, told Cathy what she’d told him. Cathy’s skin turned the colour of off milk.

It’s eleven o’clock. A joint effort to X-ray a Labrador’s leg. An easy procedure. Nothing Joe would ever think about.

Evan is trying to keep the Labrador still, but his hands …

Joe stares and stares at the movement. Tremulous fingers. His short, neat, little nails.

Joe is fascinated by them. Is Evan afraid of him? Or nervous? Or what?

The thoughts keep coming. Will Lydia leave him? He cannot, he cannot think of that. He will be sick.

Will they find the body? Will his phone ring at any moment? What the fuck are they supposed to do – go on the run?