‘What? What?’ Cathy says. Sweat forms on her upper lip and between her breasts.

‘Please help me,’ Frannie says.

‘Where are you? Are you safe?’

‘Please come. I’m on the road. Turn right off the track road and then left. Half a mile, tops,’ Frannie garbles.

Cathy waits. For Frannie to start making sense.

‘It’s him. The man from the market,’ Frannie says, and then rings off.

Him.

Shit.

Cathy gets out of bed and starts scrambling around for clothes to throw on. She finds a pair of pink shorts she bought in Verona a couple of days ago and pulls them on, the price tag scratching against her lower back.

Why didn’t she stay on the line? Cathy tries to call back, but it rings out.

She rams her feet into her dusty flip-flops and grabs her bag. As she leaves the silent villa, not thinking to wake anyone, the closing of the large wooden door behind her sounds like a gunshot in the night.

The outskirts of Verona are completely black at this hour. Even after a week and a half, Cathy still isn’t used to it. Struggling to see her own feet as she walks.

The only light comes from her bedroom window in the villa behind her. It projects a neat rectangle of light on to the patio. And then: nothing, like she might be at the edge of the world.

Frannie sounded so scared. She tries to call again, but this time it goes to voicemail. Maybe she is exaggerating. Cathy hopes so. She’s always enjoyed the drama of Frannie’s hyperbole, the way she tells a great story. She’s the family dreamer. ‘There were literally fifty dogs in the waiting room today,’ she once said. She’s the receptionist at their family veterinary practice. She had refused to concede when Cathy probed. ‘Yeah, actually fifty,’ she’d said, and Cathy had thrown her head back and laughed. ‘You must have had to sit some behind the reception desk,’ she had said, while Frannie nodded emphatically.

Cathy rushes, the long, tough grasses whipping and snapping around her ankles like snakes, muttering pointless prayers out loud. Please be okay. Please don’t be hurt, or frightened. As she reaches the end of the drive, she turns and sees headlights in the distance.

It must be their hire car, the Land Rover none of them likes driving. ‘It feels like a bus,’ their brother Joe had said on the first day.

She breaks into a proper run down the road. Right and then left, just like Frannie said. It’s him. The man from the market.

It’s him.

Cathy’s pace slows when she sees the silhouettes. She would know them anywhere: her siblings. Joe, standing by the Land Rover, his hands on his hips. And Frannie, kneeling down, her hair and long limbs illuminated by the headlights. She is so beautiful, has always been so. A wide nose. Cat eyes. A mane of dark, shiny hair.

Why is she on the floor? Cathy stares, then takes a breath, just one. She breathes it out as slowly as she can. This is … she stares at the shadows and the lights. A sweep of fear covers her shoulders. She starts to go cold.