‘He says you asked him about it?’ Frannie says.

She is tinted green by the glow of the cottage garden in front of her. Frannie’s house is effortlessly stylish. She buys things Cathy would never think to – sheepskin rugs draped on benches, old-fashioned movie posters framed on the walls. She buys almost everything off eBay.

‘I did – because his name is on that document,’ Cathy says. ‘Isn’t that weird? That it says Joseph?’

Paul toddles over and Frannie picks bits of something yellow out of his little fists. ‘Bath sponge,’ she says, unable to resist smiling at him. ‘The paper could be anything – couldn’t it?’ she continues. ‘A traffic offence. He did a lot of driving there. Anything. He thinks you’re suspicious of him.’

‘Well, maybe I am.’

Frannie straightens and Cathy just catches her expression. Troubled, somehow.

‘Sorry,’ Cathy adds quickly. ‘I just … you have to admit it’s weird.’

‘Yes, it’s weird,’ Frannie says, her face clearing. ‘But Joe says whatever he thinks. He couldn’t keep a secret from us even if he wanted to.’

‘Same as you,’ Cathy says.

‘Right,’ Frannie laughs. ‘I’m just too dumb to tell lies to you two. Is Joe around? Should I make him a tea?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy says, wanting suddenly, forcefully, to be alone with her sister, wishing that Joe weren’t right next door all the time. She would maybe even tell her about Tom.

Their parents had been shocked by Frannie’s pregnancy. She’d told them all over dinner, but it was clear Joe already knew. What had surprised Cathy most was Frannie’s drive to keep the baby, to raise him alone. She – previously somebody who spent the generous wage they paid her on trainers and jewellery – started saving immediately.

She’d intended to take leave but had been lonely in the cottage, so instead brought Paul into the practice in his pram every day, Macca sitting next to him.

Frannie gets to her feet and starts getting things out of the fridge. ‘We can’t turn on each other,’ she says to Cathy.

She goes to the cupboards and gets down a bowl. She puts something in it and presses a button on her microwave and turns her back to Cathy. ‘That’s what he said.’

‘Yeah,’ Cathy says.

Paul lines up three dinosaurs in a careful row on the wooden floorboards. Cathy watches him, thinking.

She stares at the rain splattering into Paul’s paddling pool, the drops little eruptions, like somebody is blowing bubbles from beneath the surface. Frannie’s garden is wild, full of herbs and flowers and bushes all mixed up together. At the moment it’s a riot of green and purple, a moving painting along the back of the house.

‘Don’t you think?’ Frannie prompts.

‘I’m not turning on anyone,’ Cathy says.

‘No. We know that.’ Frannie folds her freckled arms, looking at Cathy. We.

‘Just forget – forget I said anything,’ Cathy says, her voice as tense as a glass clasped too tightly.