They stand there in the sun for a few seconds, Cathy feeling like a police officer, hoping the silence will be filled. But Joe doesn’t provide any further information.

‘Could it be the – you know, the punch, you said about? In the bar?’

‘I mean, maybe?’

‘Okay, well,’ Cathy says, still looking closely at him. What kind of a conversation is this?

‘I don’t know what to do about this,’ Joe says. Another plane roars along the runway and they move instinctively away from it even though they’re nowhere near it. ‘Should I … I mean –’

‘Well, you can’t tell anyone.’

Now in the shade of the building, Joe turns to Cathy, his eyes dark, his skin sallow. ‘We should use an untraceable computer, when we’re back,’ he says. ‘Put in as much of this document as we can. Internet café or something.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Cathy says, though it’s useless. There are only four legible words. Stato, Mandato, Joseph and Plant.

He hands her back her phone as they enter the departure lounge and sit down, waiting to be called for their flight. Cathy watches the officials. The people scanning the bags. The cabin crews. Customs. And the police too, by the gate. Two German shepherds with them, different sniffer dogs. Joe is watching them too, as they sit there like sentries.

She closes her eyes against the sniffer dogs and the airport and the Italian police and wishes as hard as she’s ever wished for anything that her family, in ten years, will have got away with it, and have forgotten about this holiday, will never, ever reference it, like an event that truly never really happened. She wishes and wishes for it, the world black against her closed eyes. She stays there, the world black, and wonders if they will ever go back to Verona.

‘We can’t ever sell the villa,’ she murmurs to Joe, her eyes still closed.

‘I know.’

‘And we can’t go back.’

‘What if he’s on us?’ Joe says. Cathy opens her eyes. He’s turned to her, his elbows on his knees, body bent over double in the plastic chair.

‘On us?’ Cathy says.

‘His smell.’ There’s something about Joe’s expression that makes Cathy uneasy. She blinks, trying to dispel the feeling. Joe has never once made her uneasy.

‘They’re airport sniffer dogs. They’re looking for drugs.’

‘I think they’d raise an eyebrow at a dead body,’ Joe says bluntly.

‘Who knows. We’ve washed a lot,’ she says. A throwaway bit of reassurance. An alternative scenario plays out in front of her. One where he cracks a joke. Can dogs even raise their eyebrows? he’d say, and Cathy’s smile would turn into a laugh.

Their flight is called: 1573A to Birmingham International. Cathy will be relieved to be in her own bed, away from it all. Back to before, she hopes, and away from her siblings; somewhere she’s never before wanted to be.

She passes her bag through the scanner. A bored-looking airport worker looks at the screen through heavy-lidded eyes, head tilted slightly backwards. There’s nothing in my bag, she repeats to herself. She doesn’t look at Joe. Her whole body is tense as the scanner stops, then restarts again, as though God himself, Jesus from the Verona crucifixes, is toying with her.