He feels like he’s going to explode some days. He stares out the front of the practice. The windows of the reception are steamed up, the relentless summer rain marking them on the outside like a thousand fingers tracing their way down the glass.

He’s got to get out, get out into the rain and away from the oppressive anaesthetic smells, the dim lights. He wrenches open the door and gets in his car.

He leans his head on the steering wheel, which feels cool and waxy. God, he wishes he could call Lydia.

He dials Cathy’s number instead. Lydia won’t speak to him until she’s ready, he knows it. ‘I need to see you. Now.’

‘Now? Joe, I’m in bed.’

Joe checks his watch. ‘It’s eight o’clock.’

Cathy doesn’t dignify that response with an answer.

‘When can you see me?’ he says.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I need to speak to you.’

He hears her say something, muffled beyond the reaches of his phone, and he frowns. ‘Is someone there?’

‘No,’ Cathy says. A beat. And then, her voice wet: ‘Joe.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t make me come.’

‘Evan is going to blackmail us.’

The pause stretches so long Joe pulls the phone away from his ear to check the call hasn’t disconnected. And then, her voice imbued with something heavy, like a raincloud ready to burst, Cathy says: ‘I’ll come now.’

‘Go to Frannie’s,’ he says, though it hardly needs saying. ‘She needs to be there too.’

‘We need to do something about Evan,’ Joe says dispassionately. ‘He’s just threatened me.’ They’re sitting in a row by Frannie’s back doors. He’s looking out on to her wild garden. Mint is currently ravaging it, entwined around buddleia bushes and lavender. She doesn’t care.

The windows are giant, floor to ceiling, covering the entire back wall. Joe, Cathy and Frannie are fish in a bowl, looking out.

‘What?’ Frannie says, and Joe irrationally thinks, for just a second, that she is about to faint. Her hands are up by her face. Her waist is minuscule, her striped t-shirt tucked into jeans.

And then she laughs, a hard, sardonic laugh, a bitter laugh. It is so un-Frannie. ‘This could not really be going any worse, could it?’

‘It isn’t funny,’ Joe says.

‘I’m not seriously fucking pissing myself,’ Frannie says, drawing her arms around her waist and looking levelly at him. ‘So keep your sanctimonious lines to yourself. This isn’t a TV show.’ She opens a bottle of his merlot – still bought for him, every fucking week – not looking at him. Their sacred ritual, now tainted too.

‘What is up with you?’ he says to her, but she turns away from him, refusing to answer. ‘Evan is going to tell,’ he says.

‘What does he want?’ Cathy says. Her face is drawn, like she hasn’t slept or has a virus. Dry lips, eyes downcast, rings underneath her eyes. Joe wonders briefly what’s up with her, but he can’t ask. They each hold so much power. He doesn’t feel it with Frannie, but he does with Cathy. If any of them annoys the other, crosses a line … any one of them could end it.