‘It’s a meaty one, Bob. Back in 1986 they found two bodies near this river in Denver. One was a black guy in his sixties who’d been killed by a shotgun blast to the chest; the other was a teenage runaway, and he died from blunt force trauma to the head. The bodies were dumped within ten metres of one another, but the police couldn’t find any other connection between them.’

Abby got through a lot of books during winter, and true crime was a particular favourite. It seemed darkly appropriate in a place like Belport, where the streets didn’t just feel empty, but emptied.

Abby set the crate down on the workbench and flipped open the lid. It was filled with jackets, hats and teeny-tiny booties. She had even kept the bright-blue puffy beanie they got for a trip to the snow when Eddie was still in nappies. She held out a bodysuit with green and black stripes and inhaled all the memories that were trapped in its fibres. It filled her with a deep sense of nostalgia.

‘We bought this from a market in Queensland,’ Abby said. ‘It’s all hand-stitched.’

‘God, who’d have thought your kids used to be cute enough to pull these off,’ Bobbi said. She had just plucked out one of Lori’s old sleeping gowns, and it seemed impossibly small.

‘I know, right? What happened to them? I can’t believe they used to actually fit into—’

‘Oh no,’ Bobbi said, fingering a jagged hole at the base of the gown, roughly the size of a fifty-cent piece. ‘Ab, how long since you last checked these?’

Abby didn’t answer. She’d just discovered a pair of red woollen booties, riddled with holes. She riffled through the crate, pulling out item after item. Everything was moth-eaten. It hurt her more than it should have.

When the weather cooled, moths appeared all over the island. Fat, brown and blind, they gathered in huge numbers by Abby’s verandah light, thrumming in wild chaotic unison like hundreds of pieces of a greater whole. They clung to the air vents above Abby’s check-out at the Buy & Bye, lay in wait whenever she went to split an old shard of firewood and danced wildly in the headlights over her car. And, they ate her kids’ clothing.

‘Damn,’ she said softly.

‘Don’t beat yourself up. Those little fuckers get in everywhere. A couple of mornings ago I heard Maggie give this God-awful scream from the kitchen. She’d just poured herself a bowl of bran flakes and it was practically full of moth larvae. I asked her what the big deal was – it’s not like she’s a vegetarian. She didn’t think that was funny.’

‘I wonder why,’ Abby said.

‘Seriously though, are you okay?’