As soon as that dress hit the surface, the process of deterioration would have begun. Invisible at first, the damage would eventually manifest as dark stains and tiny tears in the fibres of the fabric as the seams crumbled into a powdery dust. The leather book casing, already fragile, would probably suffer a similar fate. All too often, I’d taken possession of textiles that had warped due to high levels of humidity. Under such conditions, a fabric’s surface could be permanently deformed mere months after exposure, leaving the artefact completely unrecognisable. Antique cellulose, once used to glue together fabric seams, was viewed by rapacious silverfish as a free meal, while an infestation of carpet beetles, prized by conservators for stripping skeleton specimens of hard-to-reach flesh, could destroy an entire collection of historical garments in less than a week. Carpet beetles were voracious eaters, chewing through silk, fur, wool and leather indiscriminately. The discovery of an outbreak within a museum was always met with a flurry of anxious activity as conservators and curators rushed around trying to ensure the affected clothing was quarantined and frozen to kill the bugs and prevent the damage spreading.

Bram knew none of this. While well intentioned, his expedition to retrieve items from the wreck was at best reckless, at worst deliberately provocative. I could have murdered him for being so foolish. But then I remembered all the times he’d shared his lunch with me in the schoolyard and the countless nights he’d slept on the floor of his bedroom, gifting me the comfortable bed so I’d be well rested when we rose at dawn the next day to go diving. I felt my frustration ebb. What was done was done. The important thing now was to ensure the artefacts were stabilised without subjecting them to further damage.