‘I bet she didn’t,’ Cathy says immediately. ‘She probably just wanted to be – I don’t know. To be considered. Not kept out.’

‘It was for her own good that I kept her out.’ He pauses, wondering how to word it. And then he just says it. ‘You know. You don’t need to take the blame. It wasn’t your fault.’

Cathy stares into her lap, her eyes wet. ‘You don’t mean Frannie.’

‘No. I don’t.’

She raises her eyes to Joe. Those big watery eyes on his.

‘I know,’ she whispers.

‘So you can’t.’

Cathy, predictably, says nothing. She reaches for his bottle of whisky and pours herself a measure. She fiddles with the glass, raising it to her lips and sipping repeatedly, small sip after small sip.

‘When you said it was about Rosie, for you –’ she says.

‘I mean. It’s why we’re all so close, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ Cathy says, blinking at him like he’s just turned on a bright light.

‘Yeah – I mean, I always thought so … bonded by tragedy and all that.’

‘Maybe it’s time to move on,’ she says softly.

He pushes the balls of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘You know, I’m not feeling myself,’ he says, his hands still covering his eyes like a child.

‘What?’

‘I just feel so fucking angry all the time, Cath,’ he says. Cathy reaches for his hand across the table, draws it away from his face. His are hot and clammy; hers warm and dry.

‘You were always a hothead,’ she says affectionately. ‘Remember the sports day?’

‘Yeah,’ he says with a small and silent laugh. ‘The post deserved it.’

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t know,’ he says morosely, still holding on to her hand like it is a buoy out at sea. ‘I feel like I’m keeping everything together. This whole crime. But I’m doing it in – all the wrong ways. Aren’t I? Is Frannie mad at me?’

‘We love you unconditionally,’ Cathy says. ‘We know you didn’t mean to be scary.’

‘I’m fucked up because of it too, you know,’ Joe says. ‘I felt all this – I don’t know. I feel all this pressure to be like – the patriarch, you know?’

She looks at him curiously across the table. The glass is to her mouth, her head tilted back slightly, but her eyes remain on him.

‘I see,’ she says.

‘I just … I could’ve done something, at work,’ he whispers.

‘Done something?’

‘I really could’ve hit someone.’

She leans across the table again towards him. ‘Who – me?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll get used to this,’ she says, his sister, a ray of positivity he takes for granted, like somebody who lives somewhere with constant good weather.

‘I just mean … I have said some mad things. I threatened Evan.’

Cathy winces. She finishes the whisky and stands up. She’s already swaying. She could never hold her drink. She’s so little compared to him. Something in his gut twists at the thought. His baby sister. Not the youngest, not Frannie or Rosie, but still a baby to him.