‘I can’t believe we have to keep it forever,’ Frannie says. ‘Tell nobody. You know?’

‘I know.’ Cathy could almost tell her now about Tom. Look what you have taken from me, before it could even begin, she would say. But she can’t.

‘But this must be the worst part of it. Right?’ Something about Frannie’s tone brings to mind their childhood. Frannie, as the new youngest, asking for reassurance from the elders.

‘I’m sure,’ Cathy says. Her chin trembles as she says it. ‘Fran,’ she says softly.

‘Huh?’

‘Is there anything I need to know?’

‘What?’ Frannie says. Her mouth parts in surprise.

‘I just – I’m feeling … I don’t know. I met this guy,’ she says, the pull of sibling intimacy too great for her to resist.

‘A guy?’ Frannie says, a quick smile spreading across her features like a sunrise. ‘You?’

‘Me,’ Cathy says laughing. ‘I met him at the baggage claim.’

‘From Italy?’

‘Yeah – he’d been over too.’

‘Why?’ Frannie says quickly. Cathy frowns, not following.

Frannie says nothing. And then: ‘You haven’t –’

‘What?’

‘You haven’t told him, have you?’

‘Oh – no,’ Cathy says. ‘No.’

‘You just never know –’

‘What?’ Cathy says, fiddling with the ancient plastic poppers on the duvet cover.

Frannie stands up, which is what she does when she wants to move on the conversation. ‘Isn’t it so weird that our rooms are just the same?’ she says. She runs a finger over the chest of drawers. It comes away completely clean.

‘What do you mean – about Tom?’

Frannie looks directly at Cathy. ‘You just – how do you know he’s who he says he is?’ she asks.

Cathy almost laughs in horror. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What – you think he’s an undercover cop?’

It’s a joke, but Frannie doesn’t laugh. ‘I just find it weird that he was in Verona. And you’ve – I don’t know. We’ve not been back long –’

‘Oh, so it’s too quick, is it?’ Their eyes meet, and then Frannie looks away, eyes glassy.

‘No,’ Frannie says. ‘Do what you want. I’m just trying to help you. I just – you have helped me. And now …’

Cathy lets out a breath. Finally. Finally. Finally. A thank you, of sorts.

‘Do you need to hit up ASOS? If you have a boyfriend?’ Frannie says.

Cathy can’t help but laugh. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I really do.’

‘Let’s do it,’ Frannie says.

Cathy agrees, and they sit in companionable silence for a while.

‘I know Evan knows,’ Frannie says. ‘Joe told me.’

‘I know,’ Cathy says. ‘It’s … hard to be optimistic.’

‘It is.’

The warmth of the central heating, the dancing flickers of the candles and their reflections in the window, her sister’s belated thank you. They all combine within Cathy, and she forgets herself, just for a second, real Cathy oozing through a crack like melted chocolate. ‘Do you ever think you might want to end it?’ she says, thinking of that triangle again, of how she can’t bear the waiting.