‘She’s sixteen, going on thirty-seven,’ Abby said. ‘And I have a fifteen-year-old son right behind her. Do you have kids?’

She nodded but chose not to elaborate. She flashed her impression of a smile again, paid for her cigarettes, and said, ‘Thanks, Abby.’

‘… How did you know my name?’

She made a gun with her index finger and pointed it at the badge on Abby’s chest that declared in bright red letters, Hello, I’m … ABBY!

‘Oh,’ Abby said. ‘Right.’

As the woman walked away, Abby thought her clothes looked too expensive, too pristine, too untouched to stink up with cigarette smoke. Abby used to love the smell of a lit smoke, but ever since she had kids it made her want to throw up harder than Bernie Furleo.

A new thought popped into her head then, as if it had been circling in a holding pattern, waiting for the air traffic controllers to wave it in. It might have been that she was thinking of old clothes at the exact moment she heard the clatter of Biller’s garbage bags against the floor of the dumpster, but she was suddenly transported back to the day of the big rain storm.

She’d come home and found a week’s worth of garbage on the road. The bin had toppled over in the wind. She remembered the ravens that had gathered to feast on their garbage, and she remembered the one last plastic bag that had rolled into the middle of Milt Street.

After her shift, Abby drove home along the esplanade. The scraps of coastal woodland that lined the road swayed and danced in the ocean breeze, alive and shadowy. To her left, a steep, grassy embankment climbed sharply up to the nature reserve. To her right, ten metres below, waves crashed onto jagged rocks.

As she drove, she thought: do this one thing and let that be the end of it.

When she got home, she marched to the side door of the garage and went inside. She found the pull-string light switch in the dark and tugged it. The harsh lights blinked on overhead. Squinting against them, she stood on the empty strip of oil-stained concrete where Ray’s truck was usually parked and looked over at his workbench, behind which the first-aid kit was stashed. She then shifted her gaze to the bank of shelves that ran the length of the rear wall.

She took the Salvos box out and opened it. Inside, just where she’d left them, were Ray’s work shirt, cargo trousers and tan-coloured boots.

Abby snapped on a pair of latex surgical gloves, carefully removed Ray’s boots, cargo trousers and work shirt from the box, and thought, What the hell am I doing?