‘Right,’ I say. ‘Yes, I understand that.’

The crime. The fallout. Everything that followed. Everything that happened following it. ‘The trial is in two weeks,’ he says. ‘So we need to get on it.’

27.

Then

Cathy

It’s the middle of the night. Cathy is sitting with her back against Frannie’s headboard, working on her phone, doing stuff that doesn’t really need doing.

They’re lit up only by the rolling Italian news. Their legs are the exact same length, bare feet completely level with each other. Their skin flashes bright red from the pictures on the television.

‘Not sure I’ll ever sleep again,’ Frannie says, rubbing at her forehead. She’s wearing a t-shirt that says RIOTS NOT DIETS. She’s fiddling with the baby monitor in her hands, periodically gazing down at Paul’s sleeping form. ‘This reminds me of after-school,’ she says, leaning her head back against the wall.

Cathy, Joe, Frannie and Rosie would let themselves into their house each afternoon, around four. They’d walk back together, along the river, then through the fields, up the hill and home. Frannie was always late. Joe walked too quickly. They complained about these same things to each other, most days. ‘God, slow down,’ Frannie would huff to Joe, who would turn and walk backwards, laughing at her. In some ways, not much has changed. Only a few weeks ago, they stayed up chatting in Frannie’s kitchen until half past one in the morning. Cathy and Frannie painted their nails. Joe drank six beers.

‘Granted, we didn’t watch Italian news after school,’ Frannie says with a laugh. She takes a sip of black coffee. Frannie is a huge coffee drinker, at all times of day. It doesn’t seem to affect her at all. Cathy stares at her sister’s profile, the perfect features, straight nose, eyes that turn up at their corners. Even her fingers are attractive, slim but not bony. She looks like Rosie.

Rosie was the original baby of the family, two years younger than Frannie. She died when she was eight. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. A rare case of a child, and not a baby.

Just that, Cathy thinks, looking at the delicate slant of Frannie’s nose. A rare event. Bad luck. Just the total and complete devastation of their family, and everything they knew.

In the post-Rosie world, their parents became strange and difficult. Their mother risk-assessing – she once banned them from going on bouncy castles – their father repressed. Rosie’s room is still completely preserved, photos of her on the wall that stop aged eight. The month following her death, some photographs of her came back, newly developed, and those ended up framed, too.

In the wake of this, the remaining siblings began to forge ahead, alone, three siblings who wanted to be together, no matter what.

‘I can’t believe how little I’m sleeping,’ Frannie adds. Cathy sometimes thinks Frannie lucky. She was ten when Rosie died, and she hardly remembers her. She hardly knows what they have all lost. Cathy, who was thirteen, and Joe, who was fifteen, remember almost everything.