Cathy checks and opens the man’s airway, a quick finger swabbing around inside his mouth.

‘How did you hit him?’ Joe puffs.

‘Turn the car engine off,’ Cathy says to Joe. ‘I can’t hear myself think.’

It takes Joe two attempts. The world goes dark, pierced by a single upwards beam from Cathy’s phone. Cathy puts her ear to the man’s mouth in the silence. ‘How long has he been here?’ she asks Frannie.

‘He was right in my path, I just turned without thinking –’

‘How long ago?’

‘Half an hour.’

A beat of silence.

‘What? What’ve you been doing? In all that time?’ Cathy says.

‘Half a fucking hour!’ Joe shouts, walking over to them and going back to the chest compressions.

Cathy puts her mouth over the man’s. She spits, licks her lips, then resumes.

She takes off her own t-shirt. ‘Use this one to stem the bleeding,’ she says to Frannie. She passes her the t-shirt. ‘Yours is saturated.’

He’s not the right temperature, Joe thinks, as his hands pump at the man’s chest. The Verona night air is warm, at least twenty degrees, and the skin against his hands is moist from it. But the man isn’t hot. He is slightly cooler than he should be, like a doll.

Frannie reaches for the man’s wrist with the other hand. ‘I can feel a flickering,’ she says hopefully, and Joe grabs his other arm.

‘It’s your own pulse,’ he says, after a few seconds. ‘In your fingertip. Because you’re frightened. I’m sorry. There’s no pulse.’

‘Keep going, then,’ Frannie says hysterically.

‘I am.’

Joe is staring at the body as he pumps away. Even if he gets the heart going again, it would be useless. He will be brain dead. Half an hour.

It’s futile.

He sits back on his heels, looking at Frannie. All three siblings’ hands are covered in blood. The man’s body is stamped with their red fingerprints.

Cathy breathes into the man’s mouth, then listens again. After two more breaths, she must come to the same conclusion as Joe, because she stops too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No, no,’ Frannie says. She sits cross-legged, just as she did when they were children, her head in her hands, one still holding the wrist of the body to her face like a comforter. Frannie, the baby of the family. ‘No, please, Cathy – Joe. Please keep going,’ she says.

‘He’s cold,’ Cathy says quietly. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood. His heart isn’t responding.’

Frannie is shaking and shaking her head, over and over. ‘No,’ she starts saying. ‘No – don’t say it, Cathy, keep going, keep going.’

‘He’s dead,’ Cathy says. She looks to Joe for confirmation.

‘I’m so sorry, Fran,’ he says. He reaches for her, but she doesn’t respond, her head still in her hands.

‘I was on the wrong side of the road,’ Frannie says. ‘I forgot. I forgot they drive on the right here.’ She drops her head towards the body like a condemned woman. Joe stares at her, aghast. Cathy closes her eyes. ‘I’ll go to prison,’ Frannie says in a voice so quiet Joe has to strain to hear her.