‘What?’ Cathy turns around in shock.

‘I told her,’ he says, his voice low and mournful. ‘She doesn’t feel – prioritized.’

‘She’ll come back,’ Cathy says firmly, but she doesn’t meet his eyes.

‘Maybe it’s the whisky talking, but I’m feeling pretty pessimistic here,’ Joe says.

‘What do you mean?’ She has her back to him. She stops and looks at him. ‘About Lydia?’

‘Were you with someone? Just now?’ Joe asks, thinking too of the other night, when he’d heard a voice in the background of the call.

‘No,’ Cathy says, and her expression is totally neutral when she turns to him, glass in hand. ‘What do you mean, pessimistic?’ She sits back down. He can only hear her soft breathing and the hum of the fridge. They are so comfortable with each other but not with the situation. They could sit here in silence or they could fill it with their darkest thoughts. And both would be okay.

He looks at his sister across the dimness of his kitchen. Their family business paraphernalia is everywhere. Vet-related notebooks, pens from drug reps, a pamphlet on microbiomes from some CPD they all attended together. Their sister is just next door. Their lives are so entwined.

‘We dodged one bullet. But – now what?’ He takes another sip of whisky. It tastes like a cough forming in his throat. He doesn’t like it, but it isn’t about the taste. It’s about what it represents. Masculinity, sure. The amber in the glass. How neat it is, how hard he is.

‘Look, we are where we are,’ Cathy says, her hands stretching eagerly over the table to him. ‘I know how bad it feels. I even wanted to take the blame for her.’

‘What?’ Joe says. The burn of the whisky has made his voice hoarse. He sounds just like his father.

‘It felt like the only way,’ Cathy says. ‘You know?’

‘Frannie said … something like this. Ages ago.’

‘She’s smart. Smarter than you think. I just figured –’

‘What?’

‘I have nothing to lose,’ she says, with a small shrug.

‘That’s so sad, Cathy,’ Joe says, his lips wet with whisky, his mind soft and yielding like honey.

‘And, besides,’ she says, ignoring him, ‘neither of you would be willing to do it. But I was.’

‘Was?’ Joe says.

‘Yeah. I mean – I don’t know. I’m sort of inclined to wait now, aren’t you? It’s been a week since they said they were searching the area. They haven’t found it yet. So far’ – Cathy dabs at a spot of whisky on the table – ‘so far so good,’ she finishes huskily, looking at him with a curiously positive expression on her face, like she’s just let it out briefly, and then covered it up again.

‘We’re fucked if they find out,’ Joe says. ‘They won’t give us any leniency for confessing. We’ve done too much other bad stuff. Lydia wanted me to just – to just hand Frannie over. Just like that.’