She stares out at the street down below as she imagines her mother gathering the photographs, sifting through them.

A soft knock at her door, which then eases open. Cathy turns and is surprised to see Frannie. ‘Dad said you were up here,’ she says with a small shrug.

‘Oh,’ Cathy says, standing there in pyjamas. The room smells of burnt matches and the hair-straightener smell of the central heating. It’s slowly warming up, her limbs relaxing in the pyjamas, in the warmth. ‘How come you’re here?’

‘Paul’s being such a pain – he’s just fractious, I think it’s because he’s learning so many words. Mostly dinosaurs. I thought we’d come and stay,’ she says. She wraps her slim arms across her waist. ‘Great minds. How’re you?’

‘I’m okay,’ Cathy says.

‘Really?’ Frannie says, her brow wrinkled. They hear the sound of Paul’s cries downstairs, and Frannie stiffens, looking watchful. Then they hear their mother. They can’t make out the words, only a high kind of babbling, a happy sound, and Frannie smiles wanly.

She moves Cathy’s bag and sits on the blue cloth ottoman at the end of the bed. ‘Joe told me they’re searching the woods by the track road.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cathy says. ‘I wish … I don’t know. Hopefully … we’re not suspects …’

‘Yeah. Hopefully. How are you really?’

‘I’m fine, Fran,’ she says.

‘I don’t want us to turn against each other,’ Frannie says. ‘I know Joe’s name on that document is … it doesn’t make sense to me either.’

‘We’re not turning against each other – who said that?’

‘Nobody,’ Frannie says, louder than Cathy was expecting. ‘I’m just – I don’t know. You’re not yourself.’

‘Why do you think his name was on the document, then?’

‘I have no idea. It doesn’t make sense, like I said.’

‘So much of this doesn’t make sense.’

A question flashes across Frannie’s features. ‘Like what?’

Fuck it, Cathy thinks, remembering her dark eyes in the mirror, thinking of Tom, every lie she’s told, how they are now fractured, because of Frannie, unable to form the kinds of relationships they formed before. And all for this, a momentary act of altruism that Cathy suddenly, and for the first time, truly wishes she could take back.

‘Do you really think Joe is –’ Cathy says.

‘I think he hasn’t got a clue.’ Frannie brings a pink hand to her breastbone. ‘I know Joe, and he isn’t lying.’

‘Yeah.’ Cathy plucks at the poppers on the duvet cover. ‘They’ve had this since the eighties,’ she says, picking up the end of it and flapping it.

‘At least,’ Frannie says. ‘They never fucking buy anything.’

Cathy laughs at that. ‘I know. They used to, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Used to go every Saturday. Mum would go to town – take us.’

A globule of wax tracks its way down the side of one of the green candles. Cathy watches it gain momentum, leaving a wet trail behind it like a snail.