‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Joe says lightly. And he does. Here, in crisis, he can be the patriarch, the rescuer he never was.

‘Do,’ Frannie says with a tiny laugh.

He makes a pot of coffee, faffing with the ignition on the gas hob. They drink old-fashioned coffee here in Italy, dripped slowly through the moka like a work of art. The nutty aroma fills the kitchen. ‘I just need to check on Paul,’ Frannie says.

When they’re back around the table, Frannie creeps sideways, towards Joe. Cathy scoots her chair in. Together, they pore over the list, heads bent, dark hair mingling together. Something about their proximity, the coffee, the earlier joke about their father, a pause in the panic, relaxes Joe. He is glad to be here, safe, with his sisters. He’d do it again, he thinks, looking sideways at Frannie, his sister who can make him cry with laughter at impressions of their parents, gradually becoming more accurate over the years as their mother and father have become caricatures of themselves. The other option – Frannie arrested last night, beginning an indefinite stay in an Italian prison today, the call to their parents – is unthinkable.

‘The car has got a massive dent in it,’ Frannie says. She rakes back her hair from her smooth, tanned forehead, releasing smells of orange shampoo. ‘I parked it in the usual spot, I thought … anything else would look suspicious.’

‘I have a plan for the car,’ Joe says. ‘Leave it to me.’

‘Okay,’ Cathy says. She is used to placing her trust in Joe, and he in her. They do it all the time at work, on operations requiring two vets, when he calls her into a tricky consult he can’t figure out.

‘Right. Look. We can’t report him missing. That would be even more suspicious. So we need to … we need to make it look like he is alive. I think we should use his debit card,’ Joe says. Despite himself, as he puts forward his plan, he feels something rising up through him. Pride, maybe? A sort of male confidence, a protective animalistic instinct.

If Joe didn’t know Cathy, he would think she hadn’t heard him. Her gaze stays trained on her coffee cup, her body completely still. But then she raises her eyes to his. She doesn’t want to do it, he can see that, but she also knows that she has to.

‘You really mean that,’ she says coolly.

‘Don’t you?’ he says.

‘I don’t relish pretending a dead man is alive to his family.’

‘Neither do I. Tell me if you think we have a second option,’ he says tightly. ‘Since you’re not into resurrections.’ He says it to elicit a reaction from Cathy. As ever, he doesn’t get one. She turns away from him, whatever feelings she has buried deep, sealed off.

‘We don’t need your wisecracks, Joe,’ Frannie says in a bored tone.

‘What we need is a plan. A direction,’ Joe says forcefully.