‘We’ll make the panels and framework at the factory so they can be shipped flat packed, then assembled on the site. Cheap, well-designed, passive solar housing,’ said Sam, talking, talking, talking, hardly fumbling his words at all, as she let them just wash over her, the plans, the schemes, Sam McAlpine changing the world with William at his side. William would keep him safe. William had shown he was so very good at keeping people safe. She glanced at the child who would have died if William had not saved them both, then looked back at Sam, because Sam was finally sitting there, and it was so hard to look away.

‘You’ve told Scarlett?’ she asked at last.

‘Yes,’ said William.

Jed didn’t ask when he had told her. If it had been yesterday, Scarlett wouldn’t interrupt Sam’s homecoming day. And maybe Scarlett didn’t know what words to say. What was happening with their relationship? Did William himself even know?

‘I’ll still go up there weekends. But Scarlett doesn’t need my help any more,’ said William, with a hint of defensiveness. ‘She’s even walking to some of her lectures again. And she has Alex if she needs a hand when I’m not there.’ The last sentence was carefully unemotional.

Ah, thought Jed. So Alex was still on the scene. How and in what way she would find out whenever Scarlett chose to talk. Meanwhile she sipped her coffee and watched Sam’s hands, Sam’s far-too-thin, too-white hands that would be strong again, as he sketched dreams in the air.

Blue and Joseph were the next visitors. Blue obviously assumed she would still babysit her granddaughter each morning. They had just driven off with her, leaving a date and walnut cake, a spinach quiche and a chicken casserole, ‘Half an hour in the oven, and it doesn’t need anything with it and I left out most of the spices so Mattie will like it too,’ when Broccoli Bill arrived, not with his old array of vegetables — even Bill could not conjure much produce to sell in a drought like this — but still with just-picked early sweet corn and a dozen fat green house tomatoes. ‘Eat them now,’ he advised. ‘Don’t put them in the fridge. You’ll lose half the flavour.’

He left with William, his bicycle in the back of William’s ute.

‘Sleep,’ Jed told Sam, hoping the Beards from the factory wouldn’t turn up till tonight at the earliest. Sam smiled at her and nodded. He moved shakily as he pushed his walker, obviously exhausted. Obviously, totally, deeply happy and fulfilled.