Joe arrives out back and lights a cigarette.

‘You’re a regular smoker now, then,’ Frannie says, avoiding the subject. ‘Just – like that.’

Joe rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer. He breathes smoke out of his nose in two distinct streams, then turns his gaze to Frannie. Something seems to pass between them. Cathy intercepts it, but isn’t sure what it means. She thinks of what Tom said: I hope they’re as loyal to you as you are to them, and something moves inside her.

‘What do you think’s happening?’ Joe asks softly. He directs his question to Cathy, who knows exactly what he’s referring to.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ The BBC News coverage has stopped. They won’t google it. They’re in the dark.

Joe drags on his cigarette, looking out into the sun. ‘Guess we just need to wait,’ he says.

Cathy fills him in on what Evan said just now, and on what she thinks he meant last night, too. Joe lights a second cigarette. ‘What a fucking twat,’ he deadpans.

‘Hear, hear,’ Frannie says, and Joe smiles around the cigarette.

‘He’s going to ask for more,’ Cathy says. ‘Or he’s going to tell Mum. Or someone worse.’

‘You think?’ Joe says. The tip of the cigarette glows red, a warning sign. ‘Leave it with me.’ He goes back inside, leaving Frannie and Cathy alone.

Frannie begins picking at a sandwich. ‘Do you know what?’ she says softly, looking down into her lap.

‘What?’

‘I’m finding it harder and harder to keep this secret,’ she says. ‘Are you?’

‘Well, yeah.’ Cathy bites into her sandwich, squinting into the sun. The wind gusts her hair into her face, but she doesn’t mind. These things feel like mindful things that keep her in the now, sensations of nature, things she feels instinctively that one day she might miss.

‘Deb’s dropping by in a minute.’

‘Right,’ Cathy says.

‘I saw her last night. Left my purse.’

‘How is she?’ Cathy says conversationally.

Frannie says nothing, and Cathy moves her hair out of her eyes and looks closely at her sister. She has her bare legs crossed at the ankles in front of her. She’s wearing a rose-gold anklet with Paul’s name on it, white trainers and a strange expression on her face. As Cathy looks at her, Frannie brings a hand to shield her eyes and gazes back.

‘She’s fine,’ Frannie says. She stands as Deb approaches. She’s tall, over six feet, with a mouth that turns down at its sides attractively.

‘Oh, nice to see you,’ Deb says warmly to Cathy. She hands Frannie her black leather purse, bought from a Mulberry outlet store last winter for – apparently – a steal.

‘And you,’ Cathy says to Deb.

‘Did you have to Apple Pay your coffee?’ Deb says to Frannie. Cathy feels a pang in her stomach for this sort of intimacy. Of knowing someone so completely, their routines, what they like to do each morning.

‘I did!’ Frannie says. She looks at Deb and there’s a beat – just one, and that’s when Cathy knows. Something about the hesitation, their eye contact, the set of Frannie’s mouth, the way she swallows, just as she does when she’s feeling guilty.