Home was a small weatherboard beach house full of things that didn’t work: sticky windows, rattling pipes, and electrical outlets that buzzed dangerously whenever something was plugged in. They were saving up to make renovations but wouldn’t have nearly enough until next season, or maybe the one after that.

Abby was in no hurry to fix it. She loved every crack and quirk: the groaning floorboards, the constant pop of settling wood, the loose screen door that banged endlessly in the middle of the night. She was not a complainer, not some woman living a quiet life of desperation, fearing middle age as it bore down on her. No, that wasn’t Abby. She was content. She was happy.

She knew her fifteen-year-old was in the kitchen before she entered; the heavy scent of Lynx body spray gave him away. Eddie was standing at the counter wearing a blue apron and chopping garlic. He’d be a good-looking man one day, in the far-off, distant future, but right now he was passing awkwardly through the Ichabod Crane phase of puberty: gangly limbs and an archipelago of violent red acne across his forehead.

He didn’t look up when Abby entered.

‘What’s for dinner?’ she asked him.

‘Vegetarian gourmet pizza,’ he said in a dry tone, the same he might use to deliver a lecture on the history of the ladder.

‘Sounds fancy.’

He shrugged and skilfully cleaned the blade of the knife on his apron. His eyes narrowed and he began furiously slicing mushrooms, as if he were punishing them for something.

‘Take it easy,’ Abby told him. ‘It won’t be vegetarian if you lose a finger in there, you know.’

He said nothing. He was in a mood, Abby guessed. She fetched a beer from the fridge as her husband wandered in from the bathroom, smelling fresh, his hair slick and wet from his after-work shower.

‘Beer?’ Abby offered.

‘Water’s fine.’

‘Water instead of beer.’ She screwed up her mouth at the words. ‘I used to know you.’

Abby was a runner but balanced out her fitness with an unhealthy amount of fat, sugar and booze. Ray, on the other hand, was on some kind of health kick. No, that was understating it. Ray was on a brutal fitness regime that bordered on self-harm.

He’d never been close to overweight. Beefy, maybe, but he carried it well. But lately, deep contours and ridges had formed on his chest. The skin around his neck clung tight to a jaw she’d never realised was square, and new muscles filled out the sleeves of his T-shirt. This steady hardening and tightening of his body reminded Abby of an archaeological dig site. She imagined brushing away the sand, dirt and fat until only a skeleton remained.