She has been thinking too about why an Italian policeman was walking alone on a Verona road, towards their villa, carrying a warrant with their surname on it. For the first time, Cathy sees a different perspective. What if there’s much more to this than meets the eye? What if William was coming to find them? What if he knew something about a member of her family? Joe? Frannie? Lydia? Cathy herself?

But, just as she thinks it, the perspective disappears, and she can’t quite catch it again, no matter how hard she tries.

The police station is nothing like anything in the UK. There is evidence everywhere that Italy is old, and old school. From the outside, it looks like an ancient ruin. Brown-stone, blocky. Dirty in that charming way of old buildings, marred with centuries of people’s living. The fawn-coloured stone is water-stained, a huge blemish above the door that looks like coppery old blood.

A man in a black stab vest with POLIZIA written on it greets her at reception. She is led into a room that smells of newspapers and coffee. As she stares at an evidence bag in the corner of the room, she thinks of Will’s skin, bluish in the moonlight. His fingernails dirty with grime by the time they got him into the earth. The way, in the end, because of the depth of the hole, they had to throw him in like a rag doll.

A prosecutor sits opposite her. He is clean-shaven, not handsome exactly but perhaps interesting to look at.

‘We are interviewing anyone who might have seen something connected to Will,’ he says to her in perfect English. His name is Matt. ‘Last night between eleven o’clock and noon today.’

‘Okay,’ she says, trying to sound normal.

Will. Such a simple piece of knowledge but meaningful too. He preferred Will over William. The same way she prefers the shortened version of her name too. Maybe his parents were – like hers – stuffy and traditional. Catherine, Francesca and Joseph and Rosemary. So formal.

‘Eleven o’clock?’ she says, stalling for time. That must be the time he was last seen by anybody. Except them, of course.

The prosecutor is holding a biro, his grip loose. He checks his watch and writes the time along the top of the lined pad. Cathy is good at reading people, and, in her opinion, there is nothing to suggest that this man knows what’s going on.

Matt seems, to Cathy, to be running through an entirely routine list of questions.

‘So your siblings and you were – up late?’

‘Yes, that’s right – we stayed up having a few drinks outside.’

‘And the drinks became a barbecue?’ His tone is mild but his brown eyes are watchful, flicking across her like she is in a scanner. His gaze on her eyes, then her hands, her fingertips, her legs drumming rhythmically underneath the table. It causes a slight tremor, and she knows he’s noticed. Perverting the course of justice, she is thinking. Right now, right this second, she is committing another crime.