The next morning Jacqui, who also hadn’t slept with Zac, posted a series of screenshots from her phone to the Friends of Zac. She’d remembered briefly meeting an old friend of Zac’s from Perth, Tristan Fisher, in a bar once. Zac had treated him atrociously, she said, made fun of his lisp, but she’d tracked him down and messaged him. And there they were, on everyone’s Messenger, the screenshots.

Tristan: Nah, his surname’s Lynch, not Batista. There was a Cuban guy called Batista at our school though :)

Jacqui: But he’s from Uruguay, right?

Tristan: Don’t think so :) Ocker as fuck, m8. Our parents grew up close to each other in Fremantle.

Jacqui: Is/was his mum a lyricist?

Tristan: Hm, maybe – she defo likes singing. Runs our local church choir with Zac’s sisters Ruth and Evelyn.

I read and re-read the exchange, heard my phone ping.

Josh: FUCK THAT GUY! Come to mine this evening?

We shared Josh’s only pair of washing gloves – he the left hand, me the right – and delved into the first of Zac’s boxes. Dirty clothes wrapped in dirty clothes. They reeked of long-term neglect but included items – his Boss T-shirt, his Armani jacket – I’d seen him wearing recently. They hadn’t stunk, then, had they? He was always so fastidious about his appearance.

Codeine pills. Paracetamol. A plastic bottle with Celexa tablets.

‘Same meds as mine,’ Josh said.

‘His name’s on the front,’ I said, tapping the bottle. ‘No surprise he’s a closet depressive.’

Van Heusen office shirts, crumpled, stained. Four … no, five, expensive watches, still in their boxes. One of Sarah’s coursebooks, Understanding Pathophysiology – what the fuck? More depression meds: Paxil, Lexapro. The Moleskine notebook I’d given him for prison wrapped up in a dirty towel …

I took it from the box, sat on the bedframe, heartbeat, opened it.

In case of loss, please return to: Zac Batista

As a reward: $ eternal life – or $40

On the next page, and the one after … doodles of my kids … no, just children … no – three adults, two children, angry lines scored through one of the grown-up heads.

Josh was into the second box. He gagged slightly on lifting a pair of dirty undies, another pair of – ‘Oh.’

‘What?’

‘These are mine.’ He grimaced at the dishevelled boxers in his gloved hand. ‘I’ve been looking for these.’

My heartbeat was, I was … Push it down, Chris. Protect Josh, make him laugh.

‘It’s probably not sexual,’ I said. ‘He maybe just got comfort from wearing them, you know, when he –’

‘Brother, too soon.’ He threw the soiled undies to the floor, half-heartedly resumed the task at hand.

I returned to the notebook, flicked through the pages, some blank, some with doodles, and then, dated more than a fortnight earlier:

•I would never do anything to harm those kids, Chris.

•There’s no nefarious reason for the things I say.