‘Er, why?’

‘Because you are not making any sense.’ Cathy picks up a glass coaster with bright colours blown through it, and begins turning it around, upending it on one side, then the other. ‘You’re ruining Frannie’s walls and offending everyone.’

‘Piss off. We have no choice but to make Evan a partner,’ Joe says, his teeth gritted. God, he doesn’t want to feel this way. Full of poison, of jealousy, of anger. But if they fuck it up, if they don’t manage to control this …

Joe drops down his head, massaging the back of his neck, which is tight with tension. He wishes Lydia were here with her soft, warm hands to push his muscles around. Lydia. He’s filled with nostalgia about his wife. For how it used to be, how it once was. When he’d tell her every single appointment he’d had throughout the day, and she’d tell him the ludicrous excuses the criminals at work had provided, her legs in his lap.

‘It’s pretty simple,’ he says eventually.

‘What?’ Frannie says. Her eyes look massive. She has two scoured lines underneath her cheekbones.

‘I mean …’ Joe says again. ‘If everybody viewed payoffs as pointless, there would never be any, would there?’

‘Guess not,’ Cathy says. She looks at him warily. ‘What are you saying?’

Joe folds his arms over his chest. ‘You’ve not seen enough movies,’ he says, and Cathy gives a wan side-smile.

‘This is …’ Frannie rolls her shoulders and lifts her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I can’t do this,’ she says.

‘Same,’ Cathy says drily.

‘No, I mean.’ Frannie covers her face with her hands, her shoulders beginning to shake. ‘I’ve tried and I’ve tried …’ she says. ‘To be – to be okay. But we’re not okay. Are we?’ Her voice rises a few octaves.

Cathy is up, standing next to her, within seconds. Joe stays at the table, watching them.

‘It’s okay,’ Cathy says. ‘We all feel like this sometimes. It’ll pass. We’ll pay Evan off. It’ll be fine. It’s only money. Better to lose twenty per cent than one hundred.’

Frannie makes a low, moaning sound and Joe gets over himself and joins them, there in front of her oven, the bloody Flash spray smeared across it, the hob rings in the sink, leaving greasy brown imprints where they sit. Cathy’s hand grips his in the group hug, Frannie’s head lolls against his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she says.

‘I know,’ Cathy says.

‘We’ll pay him. We’ll make him go away,’ Joe says.

‘This wasn’t your fault,’ Cathy adds. ‘It could have happened to any of us.’

‘It was my fault,’ Frannie says. ‘And now they’re going to know what I did, when they find him.’ And the anguish with which she says it is what stops Cathy and Joe’s reassurance. Instead, they stare at each other over Frannie’s head. Cathy is completely still, just looking at Joe.

‘That you hit him?’ she says softly.

‘That I hit him twice. Okay?’