Ezekiel had no right to read her mail. But Ezekiel was king at Overflow and while he was on the throne she was less than Mrs Taylor, who could at least stew kangaroo and pumpkin together.

‘I’ll take Clementine while you read them,’ offered Clancy. He waited till his father had left the room before adding quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’

He said those words often. He meant them, she was sure. But his apology for not providing the life she had expected, or even the life she had been used to back at home, which she had thought so comfortless, was merely admitting he had no power to change her situation.

Clancy had less money than the stockmen. They at least were paid wages. His allowance had ceased since the sale of the Sydney house. She received no allowance either. ‘What do you need an allowance for?’ Ezekiel had demanded when she had tentatively asked about one. ‘You’ve enough clothes already to sink a ship, and enough material in them to make years of clothes for your daughter. And I pay the bills round here.’

She knew enough of the world to understand there were only a few acceptable ways a gentleman could make money: he could become a clergyman, or a soldier, or take up a position in a firm. Any of those would take them away from Overflow. Clancy did not have the education to be a clergyman and any position he might be offered in either business or the army would be a poor one, leaving her in a cottage almost as miserable as the one she was in now, but in a town, an object of pity, ‘Lady’ Flora brought so low.

Anger simmered, almost too deep for her to recognise it. Clancy had never even suggested asking her relatives to use their connections to find him a proper position, one in a firm in India, perhaps, where he might make reasonable money and she would have the life of a memsahib and the company of others like her.

She looked at the letters: one, not stamped, in Margaret’s writing from Drinkwater, one from Maria and one in an unknown hand. Maria’s was addressed to both her and Clancy.

‘Have you read this?’ she asked him.

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know mail had come. Will you read it aloud?’ He began to jig Clementine on his knee.

‘Faster, Papa!’ she yelled. Flora winced at the unladylike noise.

‘Yes, my darling. Gallop, a gallop, a gallop . . .’ Clementine shrieked and grabbed his beard — he had let it grow again. Trimming it took less time and water than shaving.

‘My dearest Flora and Clancy and darling Clementine, I hope this finds you as well as it leaves me. Our new house is finished! Or should I say the new “half of our house”: the new half that has a proper drawing room and bedrooms for guests, such as yourselves.