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A plan by the East Gippsland Shire Council to hike up the cost of using the ferry to Raymond Island has sparked anger among residents, said the 3GR announcer from the portable radio on the breakfast bar.

Brigitte shook her head.

About 540 people live on the tiny island, in the Gippsland salt-water lakes system, well known for its large koala population and colony of rare dolphins. The mayor said, ‘If you choose to live there, you have to be prepared to pay for it.’

‘Bastard,’ she said.

‘Talking to the radio again?’

She felt Aidan’s gaze on her back as she bent to take a plate from the dishwasher.

‘You look nice today.’

‘Have to go in to work for a while.’ She straightened but didn’t turn.

‘Thought Friday was a Mummy-and-Ella day.’

‘I’ll take her with me. Just for an hour or so.’ She turned and he took the plate from her hands.

‘Long way to go for an hour’s work. Can’t do it from home?’

‘Cam wants to talk about this stupid farmers’ market commercial.’ She looked at the buttons on his shirt instead of his eyes. The top one was coming loose from its thread. She should tell him to get changed, and sew it for him. She took back the plate and placed it on the breakfast bar. The radio announcer said the weatherman predicted twenty degrees and sunny with a change expected tonight.

The toast popped up in the toaster and Brigitte jumped.

She hesitated at the roundabout out of Bairnsdale. No cars in the rear-view mirror. Dark clouds were brewing: the change was coming sooner than the weatherman had predicted.

Ella asked where they were going.

Brigitte wiped her palms on her new Country Road skirt. ‘Just to see somebody from work.’ She took a deep breath, held it, let it go, and flicked the indicator in the opposite direction from the Traralgon Gip TV studio. The taste of toast came up in her throat. Aidan was going to know. He always knew everything.

She drove past a Crime Stoppers portable billboard standing on the grass embankment beside the road: If you see something, say something. She should have fixed Aidan’s loose shirt button. She pulled over and did a U-turn.

After a few kilometres, she turned back again. The sky was clear ahead. It was greener down this way. Poplar trees stood erect along the roadside, unbending in the wind.

Forty-five minutes later, Brigitte and Ella both gasped at the flash of deep blue water as the road descended into Lakes Entrance.

The X-Trail’s engine ticked as it cooled in the foreshore car park. Ella chatted to her doll. Through the windscreen, the lakes looked calm; the yellow paddleboats for hire were mirrored on the surface. Brigitte turned her attention to her short fingernails, coated with clear varnish — the only nail polish she’d managed to find in the bathroom cupboard. Her hands were shaking.

She checked her phone: email — nothing since she’d last looked; Facebook — a friend’s baby had made a mess of her rice cereal at breakfast, Cam’s puppy was sporting a new doggy sweater. There was a text from her brother, Ryan: Hey Lil Sis. LTNH. S’up? Luv u. She didn’t know what LTNH meant. And S’up — WTF? She’d call him later.

She fished from her handbag a new lipstick, and removed it from its packaging. The name Harmony was printed on the bottom of the tube. She tilted the rear-view mirror, and steadied her elbow on her hand as she applied it.

Ella asked what she was doing and if they were at work.

‘Thought we’d go buy a book instead.’ She rubbed her lips together. Just to see.

At the end of a long, hard day, Detective Robert Moore (the name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it) stands on the lake foreshore of some Godforsaken fishing town in regional Victoria. Below, police divers lift the body of a woman from the water.

When the woman in the lake turns out to be Moore’s wife, he starts to lose control. Or was he ever really in control?

DEAD IN THE WATER is a novel about the darkness that lies beneath the surface: murder, corruption, and obsessive love.

Brigitte turned the book over. The shiny red title was splashed across a stormy sky, above a lone fishing boat drifting on inky water. She placed it on the table covered with royal-blue crushed velvet.

‘Who would you like me to make it to?’ he said without looking up. Not bald. Not overweight.

A nervous smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. ‘Courtney.’

He looked up and pushed dirty-blond hair out of eyes the colour of the crushed velvet. She’d forgotten all about the half-moon-shaped scar under his left eye.

‘Brigitte!’

‘Hi, Kurt.’

‘Oh my God, what are you doing here?’

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She hid her left hand behind her back. Stupid. She glanced across at the kids’ reading corner. Ella was curled in a beanbag, concentrating on a picture book. She had the new purple boots Aidan had bought for her on the wrong feet.

‘I live down here now. On Raymond Island.’ Brigitte fiddled with her handbag strap.

‘Not in the house we … stayed at?’ His cheeks turned pink.

She felt hers redden as she remembered the other scars on his chest, illuminated above her in the moonlight. Her stomach fluttered. Nineteen again. ‘My grandfather gave it to us when Aidan was stationed at Bairnsdale.’

‘You married that cop?’

‘Married two of them.’ Of course he knew that.

‘Bit more exciting than a writer.’

As if that was ever really an option. She sneezed — the bookshop was dusty, with a wall of second-hand books as well as new titles.

‘The guy who drives the ferry down there came in earlier. Said he’d read my book three times.’

‘Scott?’

‘No, some other name.’ He looked around her; the people in line were shuffling their feet, clearing their throats. ‘Can you hang around for a bit? Have a coffee. I won’t be too much longer.’ He wrote something in her book and passed it back.

She hesitated, looked at Ella again. ‘Coffee shop couple of doors down.’

He nodded. Ella ran over and cuddled Brigitte’s leg. Matt smiled and handed her a Dr Seuss bookmark.

Brigitte paid for Dead in the Water, and the new Mem Fox book for Ella, with cash so Aidan wouldn’t see the transaction on their credit-card statement. She looked over her shoulder as they left. Matt was smiling and nodding at a woman who appeared to be telling him some long-winded story, her arms waving about in the air. He glanced across, caught Brigitte’s gaze, and she bumped into a blond guy coming through the door. She dropped her book; the blond guy picked it up and apologised even though it was her fault.