‘Why?’

‘Because it is polite. You want to be polite for Mrs Drinkwater and Aunt Maria.’

‘But it’s silly. It takes too long and makes a mess on the plate. If you hold the slice in your hand, you don’t need a plate at all.’

Flora closed her eyes briefly. This rescue was not a moment too soon. She opened her eyes and saw her daughter smiling hopefully at her, as if longing for a smile back.

For the first time Flora realised how the atmosphere of the house — including her own depression — had dragged on her small daughter. ‘We must have a picnic before we leave,’ she said impulsively. ‘Up by the lily pond!’ It would be a final memory — a good memory — to take from Overflow.

‘What lily pond?’ demanded Ezekiel, his mouth half full of kangaroo.

‘There is one in the gully up behind the house paddock.’

‘Is there now? Wonder the sheep haven’t found it.’

‘You need to scramble over the rocks. It is too steep, perhaps, for sheep.’

‘Sheep can go anywhere a man can go,’ announced Ezekiel. His property was leaving and he did not like it. Nor could he easily stop it. He must know that if he forbade Flora to go, she would leave anyway, even if she had to saddle a horse and take Clementine up with her, then send a Drinkwater servant to fetch her trunks. And that would humiliate him unbearably.

He would not admit it, but he was obviously going to badly miss his granddaughter. Flora was glad he could have no idea how long she planned they’d stay away. But once they were at the Glossops, Ezekiel would have no power to bring them back.

‘It is only a small pool,’ said Flora soothingly. ‘And full of lilies. Perhaps sheep do not like lilies.’

‘They’re green, ain’t they? I’ll go up and see this pond for meself. Tomorrow,’ he added, ceding this day to her.

‘There are flowers up there,’ Clementine informed her grandfather, reluctantly breaking her damper as she had been shown. ‘Flowers make Mama happy.’

‘Very happy, darling,’ said Flora.

She smiled as she drank her tea — cold, stewed and Indian. Servants’ tea. In two days’ time, she would drink China tea, from porcelain, served in a silver teapot, not dented tin. The silver pot from Rosemere had vanished the first week here. She had kept the rest in a locked chest after that.

‘We will go and pack a picnic,’ she told Clementine. ‘A picnic by the pool!’

‘A picnic, a picnic,’ chanted Clementine. ‘We’re going on a picnic!’