‘We spent the next few summers up in Noosa after it happened,’ Fisher said. ‘But eventually we went back. It wasn’t quite the canary down the coalmine some people thought, but Belport was never really the same after that. John would have been a teenager when it happened. I’m surprised he even remembered it, so I can’t imagine why he’d be so … invested in the family.’

Invested was a polite way to put it. Obsessed might have been more accurate.

‘Is it possible he witnessed something?’ Kate asked.

‘It was the off-season; we weren’t even here.’ He looked at her, held her gaze a second, then turned back to the rain. ‘It’s time for me to go home, Kate. That’s why I called you. There’s nothing left to do here, and Pam needs me. She’s … she’s not coping. Not that she’d ever admit that, but I can tell. You don’t have to come with me; I can catch the ferry back to the mainland and the bus home after that, but I think you should.’

He didn’t add, Mia needs you, but Kate was pretty sure he was thinking it. Instead, he gazed into the rain and did something startling: he smiled. It had been a long time since she’d seen him smile, long even before John disappeared. ‘Before you got here, I was thinking about the time John fell asleep during mass. Did he ever tell you about that?’

‘No,’ Kate said, but now she was smiling. Whatever it was that Fisher had caught, it was contagious.

‘It was the night after his high-school graduation, and he was wildly hungover,’ he said. ‘He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Usually it wouldn’t be so bad, because Pam gets so wrapped up at mass that you could strip naked and run up and down the aisles and she wouldn’t notice. But John started snoring. Then, before Pam could say anything, Father Chang stopped halfway through his sermon, looked at John, and said, I’ve always encouraged young John to follow his dreams, but this isn’t what I had in mind.’

Fisher laughed. It sounded so unfamiliar.

‘Do you remember his apartment in Elwood?’ Kate said. ‘The first time I ever went around there, the kitchen looked spotless. But when I opened a cupboard to look for a glass, I saw he’d just stashed all his dirty dishes under the sink.’

Laughing, Fisher asked, ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. I just shut the cupboard door and acted like nothing had happened. But when we got a place together, I made sure it had a dishwasher.’