Cathy takes the print-out between her fingers, looking into Will’s eyes. Why did you have a warrant with our surname on it? she asks him silently. She glances up at Matt, wondering if he knows the answer.

She looks down again at Will. She’s got to be honest about the market. There will be CCTV, witnesses. It is only his killing she must erase from history.

‘Maybe,’ she says carefully. ‘I think my sister might have spoken to him.’

‘Your sister?’

‘At a market. He was smoking – she asked him not to. One of your colleagues was there too,’ she says. ‘Well, the police.’

Matt nods. His face remains closed. If Cathy had to guess, she would say that he already knew this information. Nobody’s poker face is that good. Suddenly she’s no longer hot, she’s freezing.

He picks up his pen. ‘When was this?’

‘Friday,’ she says. ‘About two.’

‘Okay, so this man was smoking …’ he prompts, and Cathy explains what happened while Matt writes it down.

‘It might not be him, I don’t know. They look a little alike,’ she finishes. ‘We went home afterwards.’

‘You and Frannie.’

‘And Joe.’

‘I see,’ Matt says, his face blank again. ‘All of you, your sister, your brother, were there.’

‘That’s right.’

Matt says nothing for a beat. ‘And you – your family, you’re going home the day after tomorrow?’ he eventually asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, raising her head, her eyes meeting his.

‘You have enjoyed Verona, yes?’

‘Definitely,’ Cathy says, her shoulders beginning to relax. She shifts her chair back, just slightly.

‘You will take the hire car back on your way to the airport, I am guessing?’ His body language is completely still, like somebody peacefully watching something unfold in the distance.

‘It’s been taken back already,’ she says.

‘Already? By … family?’

‘Yes.’

‘But the airport and the hire-car place are right next to each other,’ Matt says to her. His expression isn’t suspicious. It’s open-hearted, as though he’s waiting for her to clarify, sure that she will.

Cathy shrugs. There’s nothing else she can say or do, except hope.

‘Okay,’ Matt says, like a disappointed teacher. ‘Free to go.’

When she gets back, she finds Frannie and Paul by the pool. She offers to have Paul while Frannie goes for her interview, a team involved in a grotesque relay.

She sits with Paul on the sun-lounger, resting the side of her head against the top of his, breathing in his biscuity smell, thinking how she hopes he never has to go through something like this.

He turns to her and their eyes meet. ‘You’ll never know what we did for you,’ Cathy says to him, knowing he won’t understand, won’t take it in. ‘We did it because we love you.’

Paul catches the last couple of words and recognition flares his eyes with light. ‘Same!’ he half shouts, which makes Cathy laugh through her tears.

24.

Joe

Last night Joe dreamt he was arrested. A sympathetic arresting officer, who said off the record that he would’ve done the same thing for his sister. The cold slice of the handcuffs against his wrists. A stone cell with an arrow-slit window that let in a slice of sun that blinded him unless he moved around to avoid it.