That Night

Joe’s deliberate crashing of the rental car is a significant escalation in the family’s criminal conspiracy as he makes the calculated choice to commit criminal damage to cover a prior offense. The “satisfying scraping noise” (77) as he drives into the barrier is evokes the temporary relief he feels as his sense of control over the situation is briefly restored. This act, followed by his clumsy attempt to use William’s bank card at an ATM, demonstrates The Slippery Slope of Rationalizing Immoral Choices, as each decision pulls him deeper into a web of illegality. His internal monologue, marked by the desperate repetition of “Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully” (77), reveals that the sense of control he has only just reestablished is already crumbling. His growing paranoia, culminating in the certainty that a bus’s CCTV camera will provide evidence for “Frannie’s trial” (83), reflects a dawning awareness that the situation is already far beyond his control. This sequence, informed by author Gillian McAllister’s legal background, illustrates a key reality of criminal cover-ups: The effort to hide an initial crime often generates a series of more serious and easily prosecutable offenses. Joe is no longer just hiding a body; he is actively manufacturing false evidence and committing fraud, showing how quickly moral boundaries erode under the pressure of a misguided loyalty.

Even as he descends into criminality, Joe’s professional identity as a veterinarian surfaces in moments of sharp contrast, revealing a deep internal conflict. While anxiously searching for a CCTV-free cashpoint, he subconsciously diagnoses a passing Jack Russell with a “luxating patella” (83), his clinical mind momentarily overriding his panic. This detail emphasizes the dissonance between his role as a healer and his current criminal actions. The narrative further explores this through an extended anecdote about his obsessive care for a post-operative greyhound named Lucie, for whom he worked 80-hour weeks because he “wasn’t able to leave” (79). This reveals a compulsive need for control rooted in an anxious, protective empathy—the same psychological trait that he now applies to Frannie’s crisis, attempting to manage and fix a situation far outside his expertise. His identity is defined by a deep-seated impulse to care for the vulnerable, a trait likely amplified by The Longstanding Effects of Childhood Trauma, which now drives him to protect his sister with the same fierce, all-consuming focus he gives his patients, but with disastrously inept results.

The introduction of the “Now” timeline, which frames the past events as a formal statement to a professional consultant named Jason—presented in such a way that he initially appears to be a psychotherapist, though he is in fact a defense attorney—injects the narrative with structural tension and dramatic irony. From the outset, this device establishes that the cover-up fails and that the consequences are catastrophic. The narrator’s pained recollection that Frannie’s young son Paul has “stopped asking for” his uncle Joe powerfully communicates the deep and lasting familial rupture that results from their actions in Verona. This sense of tragic inevitability heightens the tension in the “Then” sections, particularly through the perspective of Joe’s wife, Lydia. Her personal crisis over another negative pregnancy test provides a moving counterpoint to the siblings’ life-or-death dilemma. Lydia’s complete ignorance is agonizing; as she reads a news report about the missing policeman, her husband, a key player in the man’s death, sits beside her in stunned silence. Her own traumatic childhood and removal from her parents by social services make her deep attachment to the Plant family particularly tragic, casting her as an unknowing victim of the very family unit she believes has saved her.

The discovery that their victim was a police officer, combined with their analysis of the blood-stained document found on his body, heightens the threat and severely tests the siblings’ alliance. As they huddle in a “hideous” (91) bathroom, their panic is intensified by the claustrophobic space and the “cloying scent of roses” (91) from bath oil Frannie nervously handles. Here, the tattered, bloody, partially legible paper becomes a symbol of their predicament. Their attempts to interpret the document are hindered by its damaged state and by their own ignorance of the Italian language, mirroring their broader inability to understand their predicament. The presence of the family’s surname, Plant, on what appears to be an arrest warrant warps their understanding of events: Whatever the reason for the warrant, they assume it will now appear that they killed Will McGovern to escape arrest. The immense pressure exposes the practical and emotional fragility of their pact, pushing against The Limits of Unconditional Loyalty as they begin to turn on one another.

This pressure fractures their established family dynamic, revealing the dysfunctional roles forged by past trauma. In the bathroom, the motif of blood resurfaces when Cathy handles the paper and “Dried blood floats off it, a burgundy grainy sand” (93), a tangible manifestation of their inescapable guilt. This physical evidence of their crime emphasizes the reality they can no longer evade. In the ensuing panic, Cathy’s sharp, logical mind takes over, establishing her as the reluctant strategist of their desperate operation. Conversely, Frannie appears helpless and childlike, unable to follow simple instructions, which provokes Joe’s frustration. His protector role curdles into aggression as he snaps at her to “just grow up” (95), a clear sign that his capacity to manage the crisis—and his emotions—is failing. Their ingrained roles intensify and then buckle under this impossible strain. The immediate arrival of the Carabinieri officer Mario confirms their worst fears, cornering them just as their internal alliance begins to crumble and leaving them to face the consequences of their choices.