My enthusiastic response to Bram’s email surprised me. It was like rediscovering a fragment of myself I thought I’d lost. We’d always joked about running away, escaping the island and carving out a life for ourselves in South America or, yes, even Australia. Somewhere hot, where the long winter months couldn’t touch us. But somehow, despite the banter, I always knew he’d stay behind. Our friendship had been purely platonic and I’d trusted him with my life. We’d often dived together. Immersed between thirty metres of water and the ocean floor, we’d had only each other to rely on. The trust we’d built over our years of diving together had never faded, nor had the promise we’d once made never to lie to one another, if we could help it.

‘It’s just Jo,’ I said. ‘Not Doctor Baaker. Or Feine, if you prefer, although nobody’s called me that in a long time. As for the artefacts, I think they’re extraordinary. I’m not exaggerating when I say this could be a huge bloody deal, Bram. We’re talking international coverage, the pick of the world’s very best museums, the most outstanding textiles conservators and researchers.’

I paused to draw breath, aware of the budding excitement, the blood whooshing through my body, spurred on by my erratic, febrile pulse. I recovered myself enough to ask where the artefacts were.

‘The purse and the comb are in the display room. The dress is hanging up in the bathroom. We hosed it down to get the mud off.’

‘Hosed it down?’ I sputtered, unable to conceal my shock. The idea of that fine silk surviving centuries of potential damage only to be blasted by chemically infused tap water and stuck on a wire coathanger to dry made me feel queasy. The temptation to scold burned. Mishandlings are common in the archaeological field. Any artefact dating back fifty years or more was bound to contain a litany of improperly applied conservation techniques, accidental mishaps and unsuitable storage methods. Sometimes there was a record, a series of notes kept alongside the item that could provide clues to its future management while telling the story of its past. But Bram and his brother were not conservators. They would not have known, for example, that the best way to store a dress retrieved from the bottom of the ocean was probably to keep it submerged in water for as long as possible, in a dark room. Oxygen, light and fluctuations in temperature were anathema to old fabrics.