Clementine considered. ‘I think she will come back one day, because she loves me. She told me she did. Maybe she will come back soon. Look, Papa, I’m making Mama flowers because she’s unhappy. Mama likes flowers.’

‘They are beautiful,’ said Clancy honestly, because they were, even if they looked nothing like any flower he’d ever seen. ‘Let’s put them up on the mantelpiece, where everyone can see them.’ He lifted the vase and then his daughter. ‘Shall we pick Mama some real flowers? Flora, would you like to come with us?’

Flora didn’t look at him. ‘You didn’t find Rose. And there are no flowers to pick,’ she added dully.

‘Rose has gone,’ he said, as gently as he could. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Taylor to help you as much as she can in the house. But I’m sure we can find some flowers if we look. There are some of those yellow papery ones Maria called everlastings out along one of the channels.’

Flora said nothing, but her hands moved, squeezing together till the knuckles were white. He bent and kissed her cheek. ‘It will come right,’ he said. ‘We just need some rain. Then . . .’ He had been going to say, ‘Everything will be as it was before.’

But it never would be. Even once Overflow was prosperous again, even if somehow they achieved the wealth the property had brought in before, Ezekiel was not going to make the mistake of letting most of his income go off the farm again. He’d do what Drinkwater had done: invest it in his own acres, in fences and clearing and good rams.

There would never be another Rosemere for Flora. But they could — and would, he vowed — rent a house in Sydney for at least half the year. Until then, he would try to coax money from Ezekiel — if there was any money — to make this house as comfortable as it had been when Maria was there, and more besides.

‘Come on, Papa,’ said Clementine, wriggling impatiently. ‘We have to find the flowers for Mama to make her happy. Flowers make you happy, don’t they, Mama?’

Flora lifted her head and managed a smile. ‘Yes, darling. Flowers make me happy.’

Every morning, after that, he made sure there were flowers on the dining table, and on the low table next to the sofa too: the yellow paper flowers, and some white ones, just as papery, and even the thorny branches that bore tiny white trumpet blooms that dropped within a few hours of picking, but smelled of honey.