‘Joe,’ she shouts. ‘Stop – just – stop.’

Joe turns away from both of them and rests his palms on the plate-glass windows, looking out to the street. After a second, he drops his head, his forehead touching the glass. The only light comes from a lone street-lamp outside, her brother a crucifix in the night – white-palmed and self-sacrificial. ‘Do you know what?’ he says.

‘What?’ Cathy whispers.

‘I’d have to commit mass murder if I were to kill everybody who knows now,’ he says.

Cathy blinks.

‘I’d have to kill two extra people.’ He rolls his forehead on the glass, turning to look right at her. His eyes land on Frannie. ‘Five if you count family,’ he adds softly.

‘Please come and get me,’ Cathy says into the phone.

‘Where are you?’ Tom says.

Cathy looks around the empty foyer, the misted-up mark where Joe’s forehead rested still apparent. ‘At work. I was supposed to come back with Joe and Frannie but … we’ve had the worst row –’

‘On my way.’

She pulls the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands and wraps her arms around her body. She lets herself into her consultation room. She doesn’t lock the door. She can’t quite go there, can’t quite think that Joe might be … what? Dangerous?

Cathy can hear them still arguing, somewhere in the back. All around her are enemies, it seems to her.

She stands in the empty consultation room, holding the hot phone in her cold hands, not doing anything except thinking. She turns off her computer, and the light, and stands there in the dark, hoping to become invisible, blinking back tears.

Tom must have sped over, because he arrives six minutes later. She leaves out of the front, locking the doors behind her, and walks over to his car, her trainers squeaking on the damp grass. His cheeks are red. His skin has a slight sheen to it. He smells of showers. The synthetic lime musk of male shower gel.

He kills the engine and looks at her as she gets in. ‘I’m here,’ he says simply. His eyes are serious again. No jokes.

A car with blacked-out windows cruises by, doing five, ten miles an hour, evidently looking for somebody. A rap song blares out. Big beats dropping in the night. Is this how it happens? One crime begets another and – suddenly. They’re … they’ve become a family who will do anything, absolutely anything, to keep a secret, to cover up a crime, to keep people quiet. Money. Violence. Mobs. Mafia. They’re doing what hundreds of families have done before them.

Cathy’s skin breaks out in goosebumps.

‘What’s going on?’ Tom says.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ she says.

‘Try me.’ There’s something about his tone that she wonders about. A kind of eagerness. The kind of tone of somebody who might know what’s coming, but she pushes the thought away.

Cathy watches the car cruise past, thinking. ‘I …’ she says. She looks back at him, this man who was supposed to be a bit of fun, and wonders if she could do it. I hope they’re as loyal to you as you are to them. She thinks of that astute comment, of Joe and Frannie’s united front, of his actions earlier, and pauses.