What would he usually say to her? He would find her self-deprecation amusing. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he says woodenly, knowing he has to say something. Lydia may take the piss out of herself, but she’s got a hard edge too. He loves that also, but boy is he afraid of it sometimes.

With no warning, the smell of the memory overpowers him. The soil. The metallic, tart scent of the blood. The body, the skin, in the earliest stages of decomposition. He pushes Lydia gently out of the way and leans his hands on his thighs, heaving into the toilet bowl.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Must have had a bad sausage,’ Joe says, though the only thing he is heaving up is stomach acid.

It comes to him a few minutes later, as he’s brushing his teeth, the acidic smell of sick slowly disappearing. If they don’t want the police to find the body, the police have got to think William is alive. But missing. A missing person’s investigation. But false. Staged.

12.

Cathy

Cathy has decided to ask Frannie exactly what happened last night. She wants a minute-by-minute account from her elusive sister. To cover it up, they must understand it, Cathy believes.

They’re in their kitchen, which is both rustic and basic. Copper pans hang over the top of the window, which has old-fashioned red gingham curtains covering it.

Joe is standing by the door like a guard, in case Lydia comes in. Cathy stares at the wall above him, where a bronze Jesus sits against a dark-wood cross.

The owners who converted it from the convent wouldn’t throw away the crucifixes, wouldn’t take them with them either. Said it was bad luck. They were left with them, having inherited both the crosses and the superstition. Frannie tried to take some of them off the walls, but Cathy always stopped her. ‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ she’d said. ‘Yeah, because God will curse us,’ Frannie laughed. If there is a God, Cathy finds herself thinking, they will never meet him now. Surely.

Cathy looks at Frannie. Her arms have gone from propping up her head to being stretched out along the table, her head lolling on top of them, like a student asleep during a class. Her pink fingernail polish has started to grow out, little crescent moons showing at her cuticles.

The lights are on in the cool, dim kitchen, the curtains closed to the view of the pool, where Lydia sits. The bulbs above them flicker, as they have most nights of the holiday, out here in the Verona countryside, but this time it seems ominous, a sign from God. Cathy stares at the old-fashioned chandelier fittings. Each time they come over in July, they say they will renovate, but they never do, preferring to drink cocktails and read by the pool instead.

‘We need to make a plan,’ Joe says softly. Frannie doesn’t even turn her head. ‘Are you even awake?’ Joe says drily, and Cathy’s glad of it, for once.