‘If anyone looks into anything we’ve done over the last while, we will be fucked,’ Joe says, taking a sidelong glance at her. ‘You have anything constructive to add? Going to tell the police about me?’

Cathy feels her mouth turn down in sadness. None of them is their best self at the moment. ‘I can’t sign this,’ she says quietly. ‘I can’t be party to fraud, to all this … forging signatures.’

Joe thrusts a pen forcefully into her hands. The plastic burns her skin as he presses. ‘Just sign it,’ he barks.

She looks down, trying not to cry, knowing she’s going to do it, knowing she has to do it.

‘What have you told her?’ she asks.

‘That he’s attending partnership meetings.’

‘Joe, I …’ she starts to say, but he ignores her, staring down at the agenda Frannie’s printed off. Suddenly, Cathy can’t be bothered to raise it. The train they’re on is almost at their destination, she finds herself thinking, a thought she will come back to again and again. A team somewhere is probably uncovering Will, and discovering everything they tried to hide anyway. The end feels somehow near. She can only hope that she’s wrong. She signs her name.

‘What?’ he says, catching her expression. He doesn’t wait for an answer, and instead goes into the staff room. Cathy follows him. They’re all waiting there. Frannie, Maria, Evan. ‘Evan’s joining us today,’ Joe says tightly. ‘Just – because he’s interested in the management perspective.’

Maria looks over at Joe. Her dark hair is gathered at her neck. ‘Right,’ she says, her expression clearing and darkening, as though she is working something out. She will think she is being phased out.

Cathy gives a wan smile to Evan, keeping up the front. She’s liked her colleague well enough for the past decade, but she can’t believe he took the bribe. What would she do? Be given a stake in a profitable, successful business in exchange for silence? She would have waived that, she thinks, even if her silence could be purchased. And it was, after all, by Frannie. For free.

Evan’s brows are drawn together, looking from Maria to Joe. Cathy watches him work it out: that Maria doesn’t know he’s a partner, and so – Evan is no idiot – she still doesn’t know what happened in Verona either.

‘Not much to discuss,’ Joe says. ‘On target for the month. All going well. We’ve switched the supplier of blood tests to a cheaper lab that does them faster too.’

Frannie is taking a note, the tendons in her hand crisscrossing over each other as she grips the pen.

‘Okay,’ she says, nodding. She has on large hoop earrings that should look hideous but don’t.

‘What’s the matter?’ Maria says to Frannie. ‘You’re so tense. You’ll snap the pen.’

‘I’m really not.’

‘You – I mean – I just worry.’

Frannie drops her head and massages the back of her neck as Cathy watches. Those three words – I just worry – are said so often. She appraises her mother across the staff room.