He looks at Frannie. Then at the body.

He knows the man is dead. But what he hadn’t quite pieced together is that this means his sister is a killer.

3.

Cathy

Cathy’s whole body starts to tremble. She’s gone cold, out here in the hot, suffocating night.

‘We – I … the policeman saw us arguing with him at the market,’ Frannie says. ‘They’ll assume … they’ll think … please tell me what to do.’

‘I can’t,’ Cathy says.

‘If I call anyone now,’ Frannie says. ‘I mean – I’ll go to prison, won’t I? No – no. This can’t be true. Is it?’ she implores them.

Cathy’s eyes become wet. She blinks.

Joe’s still sitting, staring into the distance.

Frannie is wiping her nose on her forearm. Something about it is so raw, so primitive, from her usually glamorous sister, who only last month drove two hundred miles to fetch a vintage vase that she just had to have.

Cathy is thinking, suddenly, against her will, about DNA. Fingerprints. Hairs. Fibres. Skin cells. They’re all over this body, this crime scene.

‘Right,’ Joe says softly. ‘That policeman. The one who thought you were … giving him a hard time.’ He looks at Frannie, then despondently down at the body. ‘They’re tough here.’

‘The police?’ Cathy says.

‘Yeah,’ Joe says, apparently not feeling the need to explain. Cathy stares at him expectantly. She knows what happened with Frannie, obviously. But not Joe.

‘There was a thing in a bar on the first night,’ Joe says. ‘This guy cracked on to Lydia.’

‘So …’

‘Well,’ Joe says, and Cathy’s sure she can detect a blush. ‘You know.’

‘You hit him?’

‘Might have,’ Joe says. He looks away from her. He’s always been this way. Quick to anger, then embarrassed by it, cagey about things he’s done. He would never hurt anybody he cared about, they have always told themselves.

The ground is warm underneath Cathy’s legs. She stares at her sister. ‘I have to call an ambulance,’ Cathy says.

‘No – no! We can’t, we can’t,’ Frannie cries, her voice ragged, hoarse in places, phlegmy in others.

‘What are you doing?’ Cathy says in the quiet. She can barely make out her sister’s features in the gloom, but she knows her so well. She knows all of her moods. Her sunny resignation when her latest relationship ended. ‘Oh, sod it, I’ll have a gin and forget about him,’ she’d laughed, her nose wrinkling attractively, but how, later, she texted Cathy from the bath, asking if there was something wrong with her, if she’d ever find somebody, if maybe she’d be alone with Paul, her son, forever.

Now Cathy can imagine her expression, even though she can’t see it – streaked eyeliner, red nose. Her holiday freckles are out.

But, for once, she doesn’t know what to say.

‘Will an ambulance be able to help him?’ Frannie says. She comes down to Cathy’s level, right on to the ground, like an animal.