She starts straightening papers and shredding unimportant items, collecting mugs and washing Joe’s old coffee stains out of the bottom of them. By the time she begins a general drugs audit, she’s immersed, ticking and crossing off what they have, ordering some of the chemotherapy drugs the nurses can’t order.

She puts some music on the television in reception as she turns to the appointment system. She knows that she is looking for tasks to do, but her heart still lifts as she finds one. She will sync up the bookings so she and Joe can make them on their computers in their consultation rooms too. She’s been meaning to do it for ages. Their system is old and creaky.

She sits at the desk and puts in the practice’s password. Frannie evidently tried a few different pairs of earrings this afternoon and she left them out, so Cathy puts them in her drawer for her.

By nine o’clock she’s exhausted. The systems are synced, she’s working in the same way she used to, but she no longer feels the same way. Because of Tom.

Sod it. She’ll text him. See how he is. She’ll finish this task on Frannie’s computer and then text. She sighs and navigates to the start menu, her face lit up in the darkness. As the computer considers her request, the fan whirring next to her, she cups her face in her hands and considers what she wants, not what her brother and sister want, for the first time. She looks out at the August skies, dark already, autumn racing ever nearer, summer having evaporated into a months-long spell of rain, and thinks.

The computer shows the desktop and Cathy presses shut down.

‘Three items open,’ it prompts. ‘Do you want to quit?’

She tuts and task switches, irrationally annoyed at Frannie for leaving things open. asos.com, hotmail.com and their drugs portal are open. Cathy shuts the portal and the fashion website, but something makes her hesitate over her sister’s email.

Cathy clicks on the tab and gazes at it. Mostly spam, mostly unread. It’s organized, hardly anything in the main inbox. Cathy clicks on the deleted items. She doesn’t know what makes her do it. Perhaps the feeling that Frannie might delete things she doesn’t wish to see, that Frannie merely pretends to be happy and sunny and fine, that Frannie avoids, that Frannie moves real-life conversations into deleted folders.

An email jumps out at Cathy. Something hot and acidic flashes across her body as she sees it.

William McGovern.

62.

Cathy

Cathy reads every single email. She never thought she would invade her sister’s privacy in this way, but then none of them ever thought any of this would happen.

And now, sated, all of her questions answered by a faceless Hotmail inbox, she puts her elbows on the desk and rests her chin in her hands, trying to think, trying to work it through. The desk gleams in the light from the street-lamp outside. All Cathy can hear is the whirr of the computer and her own thoughts.