‘Try to understand,’ Holly said. ‘People don’t usually leave a job in palliative care because they get promoted or a better offer. They leave because if they stay, it will consume them. I didn’t want John to leave, but I didn’t want that for him, either.’

The middle-aged women by the window stood, hugged each other for a long moment, then started slowly back towards the wards.

‘Where do you think he is, Holly?’ Kate asked. ‘Where do people with spiritual distress go?’

She offered another robotic shrug and glanced at her watch again. Kate had got all that she was going to find here, and it didn’t feel like much.

She pictured the banks of a stream, swollen and flooded with dead leaves. Then she saw herself slipping under the water.

4

THE WIFE

Abby rolled onto her back and pulled the covers tight against the morning chill. Ray stirred bedside her. With a heavy yawn, he swung his feet out of bed and rubbed his face with his big hands. Ray kept his own hours and was often loose with the whole nine-to-five thing, so it was unusual for him to get up so early.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Abby asked. ‘I need my bedwarmer.’

‘I did some work at Lance and Sally Thinner’s place last week and I think I forgot to close the damn storm windows. That wind was pretty savage last night. I won’t relax until I get over there to check for damage.’

‘Is that the place with the outdoor sauna?’

‘Sauna and steam room,’ he said. ‘Apparently those are different things.’

Ray’s caretaking business serviced nearly half the properties on the island. Along with general yard maintenance and storm damage repair, he kept driveways and gutters free of dead leaves, yards clear of fallen branches or downed trees, alarm systems in working order, and watched for squatters and break-ins.

Secured in a lock-box on the floor of his truck were the keys and alarm codes for all the homes he managed. But as Ray was fond of reminding her, strolling around big empty houses wasn’t as glamorous as Abby thought. He said most days he felt like Jack Nicholson roaming the halls of that eerie hotel, keeping an eye out for the ghosts of dead children.

‘Let’s hope you don’t go crazy and kill your family with a roque mallet,’ Abby once told him.

‘I thought he used an axe,’ he had said.

‘It’s a roque mallet in the book. They changed it for the movie.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’