‘Frannie,’ he says, the word exploding out of him like a cough.

‘I hit him on his side,’ she says, gesturing. ‘It was my fault. It was my fault. It’s the man from the market. If we try to stem the bleeding, we … we just need to stop the bleeding, then he’ll be okay, he’ll be okay,’ she begs them.

Joe glances sharply at Cathy.

‘Hold your t-shirt to the wound,’ Cathy says. ‘Tight as you can.’ Her face is inscrutable.

She moves towards the body. Her long hair is piled on the top of her head. She is a less beautiful version of Frannie. Thicker set. Features slightly distorted somehow, or perhaps they only look so compared to Frannie’s. Joe feels guilty every time he thinks it, but it’s true.

Cathy peers at the body. ‘That’s a glancing wound,’ she says. ‘He’s bleeding a lot for something like that.’ She reaches to take his pulse.

‘He’ll be okay, won’t he?’ Frannie says.

‘How fast were you going?’ Joe asks. He thinks he’s going to be sick. Sweat has broken out across his forehead and his stomach is rolling over and over, like a rough ocean. His sister has hit somebody and there’s blood everywhere. And now – now it is his problem too. He’s got to help her.

‘Barely,’ Frannie says, but Joe’s forgotten what he asked. God, he wants a cigarette, for the first time in months. An old vice of his, he’s mostly quit, save for holidays, treats and times of stress, which amounts to, well – almost all of the time, actually.

‘Have you called an ambulance?’ Cathy says to Frannie, kneeling over the body.

‘Has he got a pulse?’ Frannie asks. ‘It will be fine, won’t it?’

‘How have you not taken a pulse?’ Joe says. He leans over, his hands on his thighs, breathing heavily. Stomach acid sloshes up his oesophagus. Get it together, he tells himself. ‘Where’s the ambulance?’

‘There isn’t one, okay?’ Frannie shouts. ‘I haven’t called one.’

‘Why?’ Cathy says. She draws the word out in shock.

‘I … I called you two, instead.’

‘We’re not doctors.’ Joe raises his head as he says it. ‘We’re not fucking doctors, Fran,’ he almost whispers, turning his head to the side and looking into the distance.

‘We don’t have anything,’ Cathy says. ‘Adrenaline, bags of blood … look – you need to –’

Frannie holds up a hand. ‘Please just help,’ she says. ‘If we save him – if he’s fine – then …’

Cathy starts CPR, though she must surely know it to be pointless, and Joe joins in. He takes the heart while she straightens the head, the way they have with animals before. The body is cool beneath his fingertips. He darts a look at Cathy, who doesn’t meet his gaze. He stares back down at it in the gloom. A dead man.

He pumps at the man’s chest, his fingers just a few inches from this stranger’s heart.