‘Come on, Abby, I’m not one of your girlfriends. I’m not Bobbi. Men aren’t like that.’

The light globe above their head flickered.

Ray cleared his throat and continued. ‘The day it happened, I was having my lunch at the landing as usual. That’s when he turned up. David Stemple. I didn’t know that was his name then, and I didn’t know it was the same guy who’d called looking for a caretaker. All I knew was he was driving a fifty-thousand-dollar car and looked like he’d never worked a day in his life. He parked his car right next to my truck. There must be fifty slots down there, all of them empty, but he parked right beside me. Thinking back, I guess that’s code or something.’

‘Code?’

‘When he got out, he looked over at me, right in the eyes, and nodded. It wasn’t until he got halfway out to the ferry terminal and looked back that I realised what he wanted from me, until I remembered what people use that place for.’

Abby remembered what Ray had told her at the kitchen table, when she’d asked him about the terminal being a gay beat. He’d gone on about the crocodile in Blue Lake, the lighthouse drug ring, the family of deformed dwarves that haunted the saltmarsh. Rumours are like holey buckets around here, he’d told her.

‘I can’t tell you exactly why I followed him into the ferry terminal,’ Ray said. ‘But I did. When I got inside, he was sort of lurking in the corner. He didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to him. It was like some sort of base instinct took over. I went over to him. He…’

‘What, Ray?’

‘He put his hands on me. And for a couple of seconds, and that’s all it was, it felt right. But then all of a sudden, it didn’t. I saw that he was wearing a wedding ring, and I thought about what I was doing and about what I could lose if I did it. I thought about you, Ab.’

‘What happened next?’ she asked.

‘I can’t remember all the details. I know I pushed him away. At first, he didn’t want to take no for an answer, so I pushed him harder. He fought back. I lost control. I don’t know how else I can explain it. Something just flicked inside my head.’

The Switch, Abby thought.

‘He must have got me on my back somehow, because that’s when I saw the brick,’ he said. ‘That’s when I—’

‘Stop,’ Abby said. ‘I don’t need to hear that part.’