Briefly – only briefly – she imagines telling the truth. Sailing Frannie up the river to save herself. But she could never do it. She loves her too much. Frannie would never do it to her. Is that right? Cathy hopes so, but sometimes thinking about her place in the family is too raw, since what happened with Rosie.

‘Yes.’

Matt hasn’t written a single other thing on the pad. He is just waiting for more detail. When she doesn’t give it, he asks, ‘Where exactly were you?’ He breaks to sip a black coffee.

‘A little away from the villa. We didn’t want to wake Joe’s wife.’

‘Lydia.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you do anything else? Take a walk?’

She stops for a second. What if the police check their phones? They were tracking their locations, most probably, in the woods. There will be a record, somewhere, of Frannie’s phone call to Cathy, even though they have deleted their call logs. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Er – things are a bit hazy. We were drinking.’ She tries not to feel shame. Tries to live the lie, getting so close to it that she becomes it, like taking on somebody’s accent or stealing their body language. It’s fine to drink on holiday. To stay up late. There was no body. No accident. Only alcohol, her siblings, the crickets, the moonlight. The elements of it that she chooses to keep.

‘That is what your brother said,’ Matt says, and Cathy picks up the subtext immediately, like a gun in the small of her back.

‘No idea of anything else?’ he adds.

‘Hmm. I haven’t had much sleep.’

She isn’t thinking as strategically as she should be. They didn’t think this through. The certainty that they’ve made a mistake flashes up and down her body. Her armpits become damp. She takes a sip of water from the white cup, but her hand is shaking. It’s all so obvious.

‘Okay,’ Matt says, his tone sceptical. ‘And then – and then what?’

‘Then we went to bed,’ she says.

‘At …’ She can hear the trailed-off sentence. The t comes right at the end of the word, a soft click of his tongue, a full stop.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Same as Joseph,’ he remarks. Don’t respond to it, Cathy thinks. Don’t think like a guilty person. Don’t be on the defensive. ‘You were drinking … lots, yes?’ he says, inclining his head. A lock of his dark hair falls forwards, stiff with gel.

‘Yes.’

‘Anything can happen,’ he says softly. Cathy looks up at him sharply, but tries to keep her features impassive.

She says nothing. She is the Cathy who never answered the phone call. A different person entirely.

‘You all right?’ Matt says dispassionately. He glances to her armpits. ‘You’re hot?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘And on this night when you were drinking – you saw nothing, you heard nothing? Nothing unusual?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know this man – the missing man?’ Matt says. He holds up a printed sheet containing a photograph of the man whose body Cathy buried last night. He is not exactly how she remembers from the market. He is bigger here, has especially red cheeks. Two round, perfect circles, like a cartoon boy. ‘You seen him anywhere?’