Most of the shops and restaurants they passed were shut until December: Island Gifts, where last year Mia bought a stuffed seal and about three dozen postcards she never sent; Pond & Beyond Seafood, who cooked a mean grilled blue grenadier and always threw in extra onion rings; and Belport Bike and Kayak Hire.

The hardware store, laundromat and Buy & Bye were still open, but there was little movement inside. Kate’s car felt like the only thing in motion.

‘Do you need to stop for anything first?’ Kate asked.

‘No,’ Fisher said. ‘Let’s just get there.’

‘Are you alright?’

He seemed surprised by the question. It probably wasn’t something he was asked often. ‘I think so. You?’

‘I think so. For now. I keep wondering how to explain all this to Mia. Best case scenario, we get to the house and find John camped out there, working through some stuff. What do I tell her? Daddy needed a holiday? How much am I supposed to protect her from?’

‘John was about her age when my mother passed away. He asked all sorts of strange questions. Would grandma get hungry underground? Would they poke holes in the top of the coffin so she could breathe? Stuff like that. It’s quite far from the same thing, but I think the most important thing is just to listen.’

At the top of Bay Street, she took a left onto Ewing Street, then a right onto Double Bluff Road, which took her higher on the island. She came to a T-junction, then turned left onto Neef Street. She’d driven down this road countless times but couldn’t remember ever doing it without John or Mia. Driving along this street and looking at the neighbouring houses used to feel like coming home. Now it felt eerie and wrong. The slate-grey, cube-shaped mansion that she used to think was elegantly modern today looked like an invading alien spaceship. The sixteen-bedroom residence that once reminded her of Downton Abbey now looked haunted.

Finally, they arrived at the holiday house. It was a California-style beach house, set back from the road behind a tall wooden fence. It didn’t seem real; it looked like a replica of what had been there the previous summer. It might have been that she wasn’t used to seeing it in the off-season – the lawn was a little overgrown and the landscape gloomy – or it might now be coloured by all the dark things that had happened over the past few days.

Has the house changed, she wondered, or have I?

She pulled through the front gates and parked at the top of the driveway, behind a stand of white birch trees that looked much healthier than they had during their last hot summer. The driveway was empty, and she couldn’t see any lights on in the house. When she killed the engine, a hush fell over the world: no sound of distant traffic, no construction.