He inspects the car now. Yes. He’s got it. He’s covered up the dent, subsumed into a second accident, one with witnesses.

An Italian man comes out of the office, on to the pavement, right up to the barrier Joe hit. A frown crosses his face as he looks at Joe and the hire car. Joe steps into role. ‘Sorry,’ he says, moving towards the man. ‘So sorry. I didn’t see the barrier.’

‘Oh,’ the man says, a hand going to his dark hair. ‘Right, it is okay.’

‘I guess there’ll be an excess,’ Joe says.

‘Yes – is scraped quite badly, no?’ the man says, his eyes meeting Joe’s. He flashes a smile. ‘Oops, as you Brits would say.’

‘But good for you,’ Joe would usually have said back faux-cheerfully. But he must play ball today. ‘Sorry,’ he says sincerely. He’s surprised to find his voice imbued with feeling. He doesn’t want to be here, crashing cars and telling lies. And so it is easy to apologize genuinely. There is just something else he is apologizing for, is all. ‘So, so sorry,’ Joe says, his voice hoarse with it, with how sorry he is.

The car is taken to the side of the lot and Joe is left on the pavement in the sun. He seeks out a bench in the shade and wipes his forehead against the shoulder of his t-shirt. At least he can look stressed. Everyone will just think he is worried about the car.

He watches a woman inspect it. She is dressed in a full suit with a scarf around her neck, like an air stewardess. She must be so hot, but there isn’t a single droplet of sweat on her that Joe can see. Her hair is perfectly neat.

Joe sits, watching the woman, wondering where the minuscule droplets of blood are on the car that Frannie’s definitely missed. When the police will come knocking. What his sister will say to the authorities, to a court. How she will sit that first night in the cell, all angular arms and legs, curled up alone.

He puts his sunglasses on so nobody can read his expression. The breeze smells hot and verdant, the dog days of July. He wonders if summers will always remind him of this, or if he will ever forget, if he will ever move on. He wonders when they will next come back to the villa. He wonders how they will ever sell it, knowing what lies beneath the land nearby.

The man pops out of the office, from behind Joe, making him jump.

‘You are to sign here,’ he says, passing him a sheet of Italian text with a pencil cross next to a signature box. He has smoker’s fingers, stained sodium-yellow. Joe signs it without thinking, craving a cigarette. Whatever is written there in those T&Cs can’t be as bad as what he is covering up. He passes back the pen, curling his dirty nails into his palms unnaturally, defensively.