She knows, somehow, that if she walks forwards, something is going to happen.

Joe has evidently just arrived too, from his end of their large, shared villa, and he paces across the lights, in and out of shadow, like a flickering bulb. Cathy wraps her arms around her middle. A bad feeling settles over her, like she is being watched. A small, unsavoury part of her is disappointed that Frannie called Joe before her. Cathy would certainly not call Joe first in a crisis – she might not call him at all.

She turns on the torch from her phone and shines it along the pale, dusty ground in front of her. Around them are the smells of Verona: dry heat, parched grass. It’s been the hottest July on record. They had to buy after-sun most days. They’ve been through bottles and bottles of it. All of Cathy’s clothes are oily at their hems.

She can hear only the car’s engine and the cicadas.

Cathy moves towards them and sweeps the torch slowly over Frannie, who is still kneeling. And that’s when she sees it.

Frannie is leaning over, staring at the ground. Cathy stops walking but can’t stop looking at Frannie. She has something – a t-shirt? – in her hands. As Frannie stands up, Cathy realizes, stunned, that she’s taken off her top, that she’s in just her bra.

In the glare of the headlights, Frannie lifts up her hands. Red drips run down her wrists. Her stomach is streaked with blood. It’s dried, burgundy, the colour of red wine. She is a terrible tableau. Nausea rises up through Cathy. ‘Fucking hell,’ she whispers to nobody.

Joe is leaning over her now. Frannie extends her hands to Cathy and shouts: ‘Help me.’

The headlights are a Venn diagram of light, a portrait of her sister, and a body lying at her feet.

2.

Joe

Joe – highly strung, totally mad, actually – has always had bad dreams, and this must surely be one of them.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, he is thinking as he arrives in front of the car and stares at his sister. She is kneeling on the ground. He can see each knot of her spine, illuminated in the headlights in alternating patterns of shade and light. She’s too skinny. Always has been. He used to make her snacks after school, cheese on toast, yoghurts with nuts and berries. Anything fattening. They called it her second lunch.

‘What …’ he says, but his sentence ends there, like a match that fails to strike. He shakes his head. He can’t believe what he’s seeing. A body. ‘What the fuck!’ he whispers. ‘What the fuck!’

‘Help me!’ Frannie shouts over her shoulder to him. In the distance, he can see the pinprick of Cathy’s torch. Thank God, he thinks. She’ll know what to do. He doesn’t. Joe is a panicking kid in a man’s body, it sometimes feels like. Cathy may be shy, but she’s cool in a crisis.