‘You all right?’ Frannie says, smiling.

‘We’re off-duty now,’ Owen says to Cathy, pulling her towards him for a quick hug. ‘Nice to see you briefly.’ As ever, when he looks at Paul, his face transforms. Gone is the stoicism. And gone is her mother’s anxiety. They hide behind their hands as they walk backwards up the drive, peeking out to make Paul laugh, displaying a whimsy Cathy never remembers them having with her. So many parents are better off as grandparents.

Frannie’s hair is piled on her head around the scarf. Her make-up has faded. She’s so thin. Cheekbones with deep cuts underneath them, like somebody with a wasting illness.

She steps aside and lets Cathy in, as she always does. ‘Joe with you?’ she says, and Cathy feels a pang. Like Frannie would rather Joe were here than her.

‘No. How’re you?’ Cathy asks.

‘You know,’ she says, her back to Cathy. ‘Up and down.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Glad we’re back. Tea?’

‘Yes, I’d rather be on today than a few days ago,’ Cathy says. ‘How were Mum and Dad?’

‘Oh, the same,’ Frannie says drily. ‘Exemplary grandparents. Dad actually sang to Paul. Was singing “You are My Sunshine”.’

‘Unbelievable.’

Frannie laughs, picking up a stack of post as she walks down the hallway.

Her house has a different smell to Cathy’s. Play-Doh, fresh laundry, old cooking. She is always making things with and for Paul. Finger-food, kitchen experiments, papier-mâché.

Frannie walks down the wooden-floored hallway with him, knowing that Cathy will follow. It is always at Frannie’s cottage where they congregate, never at Cathy’s. Cathy knows why, knows it’s logical, but it still stings. She could host them at hers, even though her small kitchen table is always covered with paperwork, even though the beamed ceilings are so low she needs the lights on in the day. Her house might be a poorer version of Frannie’s, but it still has nice features. Neat stacks of logs by the real, open fire. Wood-panelled cladding in the front room that she painted a navy-blue. A bell by the door that she kept from when it was a Victorian post office.

Cathy goes to sit by Frannie’s modern bi-fold doors, as they almost always do. Frannie brings over two teas, and they sit there, their legs hanging down over the patio, together.

‘Joe says you told him that his name is on that warrant,’ Frannie says casually to Cathy as she passes her the tea. Her tone is not accusatory. The world, to Frannie, is quite simple and benign, has none of the complexities Cathy seems to find in it. Joe once threatened to punch a boy who dumped Frannie when she was fifteen, and Cathy still remembers her saying to Joe: But I’m not bothered. I liked him, but not that much!

‘What?’ Cathy says, but, really, she is thinking, There is a triangle here, and Cathy is at the point of it. The angle that’s most likely to bear the brunt of any impact. That’s how it feels anyway. Immediately, she wants to leave. To go to sit alone in her house, the doors and windows closed to her siblings.