Her throat clogs with tears. She never cries. She stops them before they begin, and speaks clearly to Joe.

‘I just – I feel like a criminal. It felt too risky.’

‘Just come home,’ he says, his voice neutral, a tone she can’t read. ‘Back to the villa. Okay?’ he adds.

‘Okay,’ she says.

She decides to go to Juliet’s Balcony before leaving. She needs to, to pretend that this is why she went into Verona in the first place. It’s free to go and see the Balcony, if you don’t mind the crowds. She runs a hand along the graffitied wall, covered in padlocks made by hundreds of lovers before her. She wishes she had somebody to tell about all this, somebody to confide in who isn’t a family member, wishes too that she weren’t a failure, evidently unable to grasp the most simple of intimacies. Finally, she reaches the Balcony. She gazes up at it, the small, cream-coloured box covered in ivy, and she thinks of the Capulets and the Montagues. All the sacrifices people before her have made for love. For their partners, for their lovers, for their families.

Part II

CRIMINAL DAMAGE

16.

Joe

Joe slides the gearstick into neutral unnaturally, using his right hand, as he approaches the hire-car place. Vans line the forecourt, reflecting bright shards of light that stay in his vision when he closes his eyes. He’s signalling right. He’s already done one loop, hoping nobody would notice. And now he’s ready. He’s worked out his target, and he’s ready.

He passes through their entrance barrier, then lines the car up and presses down on the accelerator. The car propels forwards into a curved line of crash barriers, a satisfying scraping noise. He keeps going, driving the crash barriers into the car, embedding them completely. Then silence. Joe cannot help but think of Frannie and of William. Is this how it sounded? How it felt? How did it feel to be alone in the quiet, in the afterwards?

Joe waits for a few seconds, then gets out, looking mystified. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully it will have dented the same spot. The sun heats the back of his neck as he leans down to look at it, as intense as a hot blade on his skin. Suddenly, in the warmth, he thinks of Lydia, smiling Lydia. who, last January said, ‘Let’s go to the beach for the day,’ and they did. He will remember that day forever. Fish and chips from a shared polystyrene dish, wooden forks, hot salty breaths mingling into the cold foggy air. The sea disappearing in the early sunset, into the darkness. Not caring about the chill in their bones. Flasks of tea on the way home. She’d spilt hers everywhere, and he’d said, ‘There’s pissing hot tea on my thighs!’ while trying to join the motorway slip-road. She has expanded their lives so much, and now he has risked that, their big, expansive life together, for this.