After he’s signed, the woman with the scarf arrives.

‘Grazie,’ Joe says deliberately.

‘Prego,’ the man murmurs immediately.

‘I’ll go now?’ Joe stands up, hoping the finality of the gesture will cut through any more admin. He can’t take it. His chest is aching with the effort of keeping everything inside, of managing everything.

This feeling is no stranger to Joe. Only recently, in May, he worked eighty hours in a week, not able to leave a retired – but not old – greyhound called Lucie, who had had extensive surgery. He did everything – the operations, the drug administrations, the aftercare. Double, triple shifts. Needlessly: he trusts the veterinary nurses. He trusts Evan, who was working on her with him. But he wasn’t able to leave, spent any breaks he took applying nicotine patches and keeping watch through the windows. ‘I won’t relax at home anyway,’ he’d said to anybody who would listen. And that is the truth, but, as in most things, there are multiple truths: Joe was also too anxious, too afraid of losing control, to leave. It was only when he had had a panic attack and Frannie sent him away with wine that he finally was able to relax, fell asleep on her sofa to the sound of her saying, ‘I find being generally useless makes for a much happier life.’ He’d drifted off, laughing softly.

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ the man says, an arm outstretched. Joe’s heart pumps lightning around his body. ‘We have to see the car is okay – yes? Other than your accident, for which you have agreed to pay this.’ He taps the sheet.

The woman and the man leave to look at the car. He thought they’d already done that. He watches them from behind his sunglasses, observing their body language, their faces, as they approach the front bumper. How does she walk in those heels all day?

‘This is yours?’ the woman says, coming around with something burgundy in her hands. Joe’s entire body jolts. But it’s just Frannie’s purse.

He stares at the bag in the woman’s outstretched hand. It’s fine. It’s fine. That’s not evidence. He was so busy fixing the outside of the car, he forgot to look inside. What else has he missed? Her eyebrows rise. He takes off his sunglasses. The pale pavement is blinding.

He hands over the keys, and the woman takes them. She stumbles slightly in her heels as she does so, a tiny chink in her perfect armour. ‘Might want to try flats,’ Joe says drily.

‘Not allowed,’ the woman says with a smile.

‘Get him in heels too, then,’ Joe says, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the man.

The woman laughs and turns away from him. The car is being taken away. He’s done it. It’ll be cleaned now, thoroughly, professionally, any microscopic evidence that remains wiped away.

Joe’s body sags in relief as he dials the taxi number handwritten on a sign in the window. He presses call and feels a tap on his shoulder. ‘Sorry – you miss one signature,’ the woman says. Joe looks closely at her and sees three distinct beads of sweat along her upper lip. He feels sorry for her, suddenly, in that suit in this weather, like she is an overworked animal, a donkey on Blackpool beach.