‘I think I’ve got all the life I can cope with just now,’ said Jed hurriedly. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go.’

‘Okay. I’ll be down next weekend. That still all right?’

‘Of course, if you don’t mind a sofa bed in a study crammed with books. Scarlett will be here too.’

‘My ideal house will be built out of books, all properly catalogued, silverfish proofed and sealed against the weather. Take care, Jed, my love. See you soon.’

Mattie was finally in her new bed, which had been quickly borrowed from Overflow once she learned to climb out of her cot at risk to head, legs and fingers. The old house was finally silent. Or rather the old house echoed with the creak of the cooling roof, the call of a mopoke down by the river, the harsh possessive shriek of the old male possum who lived in the lemon tree, and Maxi’s soft pant, her head resting on Jed’s foot as she sat at the kitchen table.

She had her study, lined with books, and the desk Sam had retrofitted with all the small shelves a writer might need. But since his accident she had taken to writing at the kitchen table, at the heart of the house, where she might still imagine the mutter of the ute coming up the drive or glimpse him out the window ‘making his contribution to the annual rainfall’ on the lemon tree.

The typewriter stared up at her. So did the blank sheet of paper. She had to write. She needed to write. She needed an excuse to write.

Please, she thought, let Matilda be a success. Writing provided an even more secure escape from the world than reading — she had discovered that at age six, hiding crouched in the linen cupboard from her mother’s drunken anger, imagining a story about a horse chased by a ghost, who was frightened, just like she was frightened, but who escaped, as she could not . . .

Later, her mother asleep, mouth open, lipstick-stained drool, the house temporarily safe, Jed had written the story down, using one of the fountain pens Dad kept leaving around the house and some old blotting paper he’d thrown out. She’d shown it to her teacher, who’d read it to the entire class, and every day after that she’d been allowed to tell the class a story for the last fifteen minutes of school. That had been the beginning . . .

And now she was a writer, though of course she had always been a writer, but she wasn’t writing and she needed to, even if she later threw away every page she typed that night. Which she probably would, for Nancy’s tale that afternoon probably was not where her book would begin. She’d learned that writing her first book. She’d written five beginnings before she found the one she needed.

And surely this Flora McPherson was just a distraction, a pretty girl who must vanish somehow before the true love story could begin. Maria was far more interesting. Maria who was kind, who loved beauty, who must always hide her face . . .