‘For a consult?’ she’d said.

‘For a coffee.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh – no,’ he’d said, looking for a second at her expression. He was huge, this Pete Green who liked giant rabbits and daytime consults. A mountain of a man. ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry.’

‘Oh – I just – sorry,’ Cathy had said. ‘Coffee would be good.’

She’d looked forward to it all week. She’d practised in front of the mirror, adopting Frannie’s easy body language. She’d made a list on her phone of topics to talk about, if she dried up. Because that is what always happens to Cathy. She can’t think of anything to say. What a stupid problem to have, she often thinks, but it is a problem nevertheless.

They’d met in the evening in a venue that was a cross between a bar and a café. It had been one of those glum, rainy spring evenings that felt like it could be autumn. Dark-wood beams rested up ahead, pendulous lights hung down like stars. ‘It’s so dark in here I can’t fucking see,’ Pete had said, which had made her smile. Rain spattered the floor-length windows and washed the street outside.

They’d drunk coffee and shared carrot cake, then ordered a pot of tea, which was brought to them by a waitress so stroppy they’d been shaking with laughter. They’d watched the sky fade to black outside. Cathy remembers odd details of it: wrapping her hands around the warm mug. Seeing a virtual stranger’s eyes in candlelight. Parting ways on a cold spring night.

She thought it had gone well. They’d laughed, hadn’t they? There weren’t as many awkward silences as usual? She hadn’t panicked in the bathroom about small talk, or blushed so much she wanted to run out?

Cathy had made a cup of tea when she arrived home and sat at her kitchen table, just as she is now. She buried herself in paperwork, and then the text came through. Credit to him, he was straight up. A lovely evening but better off as friends. She had put her head into her hands, then, looking at Macca and feeling her loneliness. Macca couldn’t speak. He couldn’t ease it. Sometimes it was so bad that she wanted to phone some sort of hotline. Hire an assistant, a robot, to sit opposite her and simply witness her drinking this cup of tea. Otherwise, basically it’s as if it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.

In Verona, she goes to bed eventually, around four or five. She’s woken at nine by a knock on the door. She goes downstairs, pyjama-clad and anxious, and sees two shifting forms through the window. It’s the police again. Carabinieri. Black and red uniforms, a warning sign, like poisonous insects. Her stomach falls off a cliff. They know. They know. They’ve seen her. They’ve seen Joe. And now it’s time. They could only keep running for so long, like trying to stay ahead of a tsunami.

Cathy opens the door with shaking hands. ‘Hello,’ she says.