Cathy sighs, a long exhale that doesn’t seem to end. ‘Fine,’ she says.

‘Fine?’

‘I’ll sort the debit card,’ Cathy says quietly, her face still turned to the side. ‘You do the car.’

To Frannie, Joe says, ‘You come up with a version of events for last night that we’ll all stick to, in case we’re questioned.’

Frannie nods. ‘Okay,’ she says in a small voice, the same voice she used when she found out she was pregnant, the same voice she used when she left veterinary school and decided she would just man the reception instead. Scared, but pretending not to be. ‘Okay.’

15.

Cathy

Cathy is standing by the hire car. The sun is slowly cooking her skin. A relentless, dry, deep heat, like an oven door is open somewhere in the universe. Her heart is straining to pump because of the pressure in her chest. She wants to release it, to shout from a cliff-face, to grab a stranger’s lapels and tell them: We are killers! Cathy often fantasizes about saying exactly how she feels sometimes – that she’s pissed off with an owner who let their dog get ravaged by fleas, or that she feels so lonely she sometimes eats dinner in front of a mirror – but this is different. This is worse.

‘It’s pretty bad,’ she says to Joe.

‘I’m going to take it back early.’

Cathy runs a hand over the dented front bumper. Frannie’s done a good clean-up job, which is surprising. Frannie is messy. The receptionist desk at work is always cluttered with her things – some of them good ideas, like the lamp they turn on if a euthanasia is taking place, so people know to be quiet. But most of it is clutter, sometimes her ASOS deliveries that she tries on in the staff room while Cathy gives her opinions.

‘Won’t that look more suspicious?’ she says to Joe. ‘It’s not due back for two days.’

‘Better than the police inspecting the car, isn’t it?’ Joe says. He shrugs, looking at Cathy.

‘They won’t look at the car,’ Cathy says, but she’s merely reassuring him. She thinks about her own behaviour at work, how she forensically goes through each possibility when an animal is sick, running down a list of less and less likely outcomes, never really intending to stop. Yes, if someone were missing, she’d check everyone’s stories, everyone’s cars, she thinks. She’d interview every pair of eyes in the vicinity. She shudders at the thought of it.

‘Here it is,’ Joe says, handing her the wallet. They’re safe out here on the winding driveway, which meets the track road where it happened. Both are lined with scrubby weeds, the road untended, unvisited, thankfully. She takes it, feeling like a thief. The leather is warm against her fingers, soft as a worn cloth. It’s a simple black wallet, holding only cards, three crude slashes on each side forming the pockets.

‘Okay,’ she says. Joe stands in front of her, his hands on his hips. The setting is too idyllic for the conversations they’re having: the sky a wide blue dome up ahead, the grass a parched yellow, pretty weeds growing by the side of the track road.