That Night

In Verona, Italy, a veterinarian named Cathy Plant is awake late at night in her family’s holiday villa when she receives a panicked call from her younger sister, Francesca “Frannie” Plant. Frannie begs for help, gives disjointed directions, and says, “It’s him. The man from the market,” (4) before hanging up. Cathy rushes out and follows the directions to a dirt road where she sees the headlights of their rental car. Her older brother, Joe Plant, is standing by the car while Frannie kneels on the ground. As Cathy approaches, she sees that Frannie is covered in blood and wearing only a bra. Frannie holds out her bloody hands and again asks for help as Cathy sees a body lying at her feet.

The narrative shifts to Joe’s perspective, moments before Cathy’s arrival at the scene of the collision. He is relieved when he sees Cathy, trusting his sister’s calm demeanor in a crisis. Frannie hysterically explains that she hit the man from the market with the car. Joe and Cathy, both veterinarians, recognize from multiple signs—including the body’s cool temperature and absence of pulse—that the man is clearly dead. Frannie, however, believes he can be saved and begs them to stop the bleeding. When they learn that she hasn’t called an ambulance and that the man has been lying there for half an hour, they begin CPR despite knowing it is futile. After a few minutes, they stop their efforts. Frannie confesses that she was driving on the wrong side of the road. She fears that she will go to prison.

Frannie panics, recalling that a policeman saw her arguing with the victim at the market earlier that day. She worries the death will be considered intentional. Joe adds that the local police are strict, alluding to his own aggressive encounter with them after a man harassed his wife, Lydia. Cathy insists they must call an ambulance, but Frannie pleads with her not to, desperate to avoid prison and abandoning her young son, Paul. Frannie dismisses Cathy’s suggestions of creating a cover story, pointing out that the rental car is dented and too much time has passed. She concludes that their only option is to cover up the crime. Joe is appalled, and when he yells that she has killed someone, Frannie—through tears—states that they have to bury the body.

The narrative shifts to the present day in Birmingham. The unnamed first-person narrator is meeting with a man named Jason in his office. She tells Jason she has been consumed by thoughts of Verona, acknowledging that she and her siblings made many mistakes. She refers to a piece of paper they found on the victim, whom she names as William. Jason encourages her to focus on Frannie’s son, Paul, to ground herself in the present. She reveals that she is now completely estranged from her siblings and parents. Paul increasingly resembles Joe and is too young to remember when their family was whole.

The story returns to the night of the accident in Verona. Joe and Cathy initially refuse to bury the body. Joe thinks about his own threatening encounter with the Italian police after he punched a man for groping Lydia. Frannie’s desperate pleas trigger Joe’s deep protective instincts toward his youngest sister, which he connects briefly to memories of Rosie. Joe makes a move to call the police, but Frannie stops him, sobbing that he will send her to prison for decades. His resolve crumbles; he cannot betray his sister. Cathy silently agrees. Frannie repeats her demand: They must bury the body. After a moment, Cathy asks where.

The siblings begin to plan the cover-up. Cathy suggests using fire to destroy the blood evidence on the road. They decide to bury the body in the deserted woods near their villa. Joe and Cathy agree to dig a grave at least seven feet deep to evade sniffer dogs, while Frannie is tasked with burning the blood from the road and cleaning the rental car, staging the scene to look like a bonfire. Joe and Cathy then carry the body into the woods.

As they prepare to dig, Joe and Cathy question their decision, but both know they cannot call the police. Cathy mentions that the victim had an English accent. Joe’s wife, Lydia, works as a secretary at a criminal law firm, and her experience leads Joe to believe that Frannie could receive a life sentence if the police infer intent. Cathy suggests they check the man’s wallet for identification. Joe finds keys, a wallet, and a torn, blood-soaked piece of paper. He wants to bury everything with the body, but Cathy insists they keep the items, vaguely hoping they might one day help the man’s family. They dig for two hours, agreeing that no one outside of the three of them can ever know what happened. Once the grave is finished, Frannie joins them. As dawn breaks, Cathy inspects the wallet and identifies the man as William “Will” R. McGovern, a 31-year-old man who was half-British. Frannie leans over William in farewell, and Cathy then closes his eyes.

In the present, the narrator and Jason walk together after a session. He asks if she has had any contact with her siblings, and she confirms that she has not. She tells him she isn’t surprised, as she believes they ultimately acted selfishly. Jason parts from her to attend what he calls a “long-standing appointment” in a nondescript nearby building.

Back in Verona, the siblings finish covering the grave at 7:30 am. Cathy, overwhelmed by guilt, examines the torn, illegible paper that Joe had retrieved from William’s body before burial. Frannie worries about her son Paul, who is sleeping back at the villa, but Joe says Lydia will look after him. Joe voices anxiety that William might not have been dead when they buried him, but Cathy reassures him. As they emerge from the woods into the morning light, Frannie takes Cathy’s hand for support. Cathy realizes how much evidence they still need to destroy, from their bloody clothes to the dented car, and understands they have just begun a lifetime of deception.

At dawn, Lydia wakes to find Joe gone. Her main concern is taking a pregnancy test, as they have been trying to conceive for a year and a half. The test is negative. Later, while getting breakfast with Paul, Lydia is still unable to reach Joe or Frannie. She sees two Carabinieri (Italian police) in the restaurant and, fearing they are there about Joe’s earlier fight, approaches them. When she gives the officers the family’s name, one tells her not to worry but then whispers to his partner as she walks away.

When Lydia returns to their room, she confronts Joe, who has just showered. He lies about being at breakfast and struggles to conceal the dirt under his fingernails. Lydia tells him the police were at the restaurant and that she told them she didn’t know where he was. The news sends Joe into a panic, and he vomits, overwhelmed by the memory of the crime. He realizes that to stop the police from finding the body, they must create a false trail suggesting William is alive but missing.

The three siblings meet in the villa’s kitchen to align their stories. Cathy asks Frannie for a detailed account of the accident. Frannie claims she accidentally pulled onto the wrong side of the road and that the impact threw William’s body, causing a delay as she searched for him in the dark. She says she called them instead of an ambulance out of fear. Her story seems plausible, and her siblings are sympathetic. Joe then proposes a plan to mislead the police into believing that William is missing but alive. Cathy is horrified by the cruelty of giving his family false hope, but Joe argues they have no other choice. Reluctantly, Cathy agrees to participate. Joe asks her whether she still has William’s wallet, and she replies that she does.

During another session, Jason asks the narrator to identify the moment she knew their cover-up would fail. She recalls being at the reception desk of their veterinary practice late one evening after returning to the UK. She says she logged onto the computer, saw something, and knew at that moment that they would not get away with it.

The narrative returns to the sibling’s meeting in the villa kitchen in Verona. Joe feels watched by the crucifixes on the walls as he outlines their plan on the back of a menu. He proposes they use William’s debit card to create the illusion that he is still alive. Cathy is visibly disturbed by the idea but concedes they have no alternative. They divide the tasks: Joe will deal with the damaged rental car, Cathy will use the debit card to make a transaction at a randomly chosen convenience store, and Frannie will invent a detailed alibi for all of them for the previous night.

As Cathy and Joe inspect the damaged rental car, Joe gives Cathy William’s wallet and explains his plan to return the rental car early to avoid police inspection. Cathy takes a bus into Verona, intending to use William’s card for a small, untraceable purchase. On the bus, she recalls the market altercation: William had blown cigarette smoke over Frannie’s son Paul, and Joe had become aggressive until a policeman intervened and warned the group against causing trouble, his rebuke notably directed at Frannie for swearing at people. In Verona, Cathy is overwhelmed by guilt and paranoia, seeing CCTV cameras everywhere. She enters a newsagent but finds herself physically unable to use the dead man’s card. She pays with her own money, calls Joe to tell him she failed, and then visits a famous tourist destination—a balcony falsely purported to have inspired the famous balcony scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—to maintain her alibi of sightseeing.