She walks past two mini piazzas, a posh bakery and a restaurant with Italian flags up outside it that flap in the wind, a row of Vespas.

She looks around her. CCTV is everywhere. Little round cameras, rectangular ones pointing down like birds homing in on their prey. She can’t do it here. She needs a crowd. The second she uses his card, they will comb the CCTV.

She needs something as everyday as possible. Trying to look casual, she gets out her phone, then navigates across the city to Juliet’s Balcony. She passes clean, bright, white piazzas with neat green topiary, polished marble floors, little alleyways, Italian chalkboards advertising things Cathy can’t understand outside cafés. Shit, shit, shit. Where are the newsagents? Just as she starts to think she won’t find any, she sees one. A green awning with white trim. More than a handful of people inside and out. She could blend in. She looks up, trying to look normal. No CCTV that she can see. This is it. This is their chance.

Inside, the shop is warm and dark. It smells of newspapers and sun-cream. Cathy edges behind somebody to get a bottle of water. Her entire body is covered in sweat, which evaporates off her as she opens the fridge, leaving her shivery. Her damp fingers leave impressions in the condensation on the bottle of Evian. Fingerprints. She stares at them. Her hands slip on the cold bottle. It’s almost icy, a solid weight in her hands.

Just get to the till, she tells herself, walking mechanically forward.

She reaches into her handbag to touch William’s wallet.

Anybody could see her here on the CCTV. Anybody could ask her, at the till, why she is using a card clearly not belonging to her. They could be old-fashioned, and ask for a signature. And then what? No. This is stupid. The skin on her chest heats up, becomes mottled.

She can’t do it.

She won’t do it. Cathy can’t disentangle the fear from morality and logic. It is all a mess in her mind.

She pays for the water with her own card and gets out, breathing heavily, her hands two spikes of pins and needles.

She calls Joe.

‘How’d it go?’ he says, instead of greeting her.

‘I couldn’t do it, Joe,’ she says softly.

‘What?’

‘I just couldn’t do it.’ She uncaps the water and sips from it, from this bottle that was supposed to – on some other immoral planet – have been purchased by a dead man.

Joe hesitates. ‘You’re too scared?’ he asks. She casts about inside herself, wondering if it is fear, and maybe it is, partly. But she can’t use a dead man’s card, can’t pretend to be him. Lead his family to false hope. She can’t, she can’t. She knows that makes no sense, given what they’re trying to get away with. That, in refusing to proceed down the slippery slope, Cathy is refusing to help her sister. Her sister who is relying on her, who has always relied on her, whose hand Cathy held tightly as they crossed the busy road outside their school. And what is she doing now? Letting go. Casting her into the traffic. There is guilt whichever action she takes.