‘You can go on one condition: you give me a hug.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Come on. It won’t kill you.’

‘Does it bother you that you have to bribe me for physical affection?’

‘Just a pinch,’ Abby said.

Lori sighed and grumbled, ‘Fine.’

She gave her mother the briefest of hugs. For a fleeting moment the teenager was gone, and the child remained in Abby’s arms. But then the Pop-Tarts were flung up from the toaster, and Lori squirmed away to fetch them.

Eddie shuffled into the kitchen next and began banging open cupboards, looking for cereal. He had dragged his trademark hoodie on over his school uniform, and had drawn the pull-strings so tight that his face peeked out from a small fabric mouth, like a forest nymph peeking nervously out from a cave.

‘Morning, kid,’ Abby said.

He grunted a reply and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Lori told him. ‘You look like you just learned how to walk upright.’

Eddie flipped his sister the bird. She replied with her own middle finger, which seemed to settle things between them.

Abby ran the same route twice a week.

That morning, starting from home, she turned left up Harvill Hill Road, feeling the incline in her thighs. The saltbush that lined the road was dewy, dancing wildly in the breeze. Further down, the low intersection between Brown and Delahunt Streets was flooded. It happened around the same time each year and took most of the winter to drain. The council had dragged out two bright-orange sawhorses to stop frustrated drivers from trying their luck.

Fat rain lashed against her face, streamed down her cheeks, soaked her running sneakers. Her winter weight jiggled. Her left knee made a worrying clicking sound every few steps and something didn’t feel right in her ankle, but she pushed through it. Abby loved to run during winter. The combination of endorphins and bitter coldness was exhilarating.

At the crest of the hill, a panoramic view of the island opened up to reveal large patches of dense bushland and a handful of freshwater lakes to the south. To the north, the town spread out like barnacles on the overturned belly of a whale. At least two thirds of the houses on the island were empty this time of year, bleak and functionless, like socks without feet.

When the weather was warm, Belport swelled with tourists, campers and holiday-makers. But when the sun went away, so did the people. Blinds were drawn on stale rooms, plastic protective sheets were thrown over furniture, and all the big cedar beach houses that dotted the island sat empty for the majority of the following nine months. The island should have felt bigger with fewer people in it, but it was somehow smaller, as if the coastline was slowly closing in. She had tried to explain this feeling to Ray once, but he’d come back at her with a load of facts about erosion.