‘Let’s just turn this off,’ Cathy says. ‘We’ll only see something about him again.’ Already, the footage of the sniffer dogs has cycled around twice, a sea of black and tan on the horizon, a forensics team accompanying them, eerie, tall, white figures among the dogs.

Frannie mutes it but doesn’t turn off the picture. She finishes her coffee and puts the mug in between her shins on the bed. Her phone is charging on the windowsill, and Cathy can see it lighting up, even at this hour. Why are all her friends awake?

‘Why do you think he had that piece of paper?’ Cathy asks her, rather than asking her about her friends – and how she came to make so many of them, so easily.

‘I mean,’ Frannie says, reaching for the mug again and tossing it from one hand to the other as she thinks, ‘he was a police officer.’

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘It could have been anything, couldn’t it? A safety inspection of our villa? A hire-car thing? We have no idea.’

Cathy shifts her position on the bed, crossing her legs underneath her. Frannie unconsciously rests an elbow on Cathy’s knee. Despite the sombre situation, Cathy still manages to locate her old anxieties and their counterpoints. That Frannie is closer to Joe than to her. That she finds Cathy incomprehensible, boring, weird. That elbow says differently, and Cathy pats it.

‘What if he was investigating someone?’ Frannie says.

‘Who?’

‘Well, not you or me.’

‘Right?’

‘Joe? Or Lydia? What if Joe went after Will and – you know how he can be –’

‘I know,’ Cathy says. ‘Maybe Joe got in more trouble the other night with Lydia and that man than he said.’

‘Yeah. Maybe we could ask him. Where is the document?’ Frannie says, extending a hand to Cathy.

‘In my room.’

‘Let’s look at it again. Tomorrow. With him, when we’ve all slept. See what he does.’

She stares straight ahead, at the television, but her features look troubled. Cathy can tell she is going over whether Joe is involved in some way more than he says. She looks gaunt tonight. The sockets of her eyes are clearly defined, incongruous against the holiday tan, the highlights and shadows exaggerated by the monochrome glow of the TV.

Joe’s in the shower down the hall. He can’t sleep either. They can hear the water hitting his body, collecting and running off in thick ropes of water.

‘Look,’ Frannie says suddenly, staring at the television. Cathy turns her attention away from Frannie’s cheekbones and to the screen.

Omicidio. Cathy’s body reacts to the word before her mind can translate it. She sits forward, looking at the English subtitles. They scroll past, painfully slowly, like the football news on Ceefax they would sometimes watch after school together.

Police open homicide investigation due to forged cashpoint transaction.

Cathy feels the veins in her skull pound. She puts her head in her hands as the room dips and spins around her. ‘What?’ she whispers.