Maxi whined, her head on her paws. Jed quickly checked the rest of her small body as Mattie shivered in shock, but there were puncture wounds only on one arm. And why was Mattie so wet . . .

‘It grabbed me,’ whispered Mattie.

‘I know, darling. I promise we won’t let it happen again.’

‘It grabbed me from behind, Mummy. It tooked me. But Maxi got me too . . .’ Mattie struggled up, trying to see the dog. She held out her arms. Maxi whined again and wriggled slightly closer.

‘What?’ Dimly Jed heard that the river roared louder than the song she’d welcomed back.

She struggled to stand up, Mattie still in her arms, and looked down the hill. This morning the river had been a wide brown snake, twisting, turning. Now it tossed dead sheep and logs. A line of lighter debris showed where it had suddenly risen, only metres from the house, and just as suddenly retreated again. The banksia bushes were clothed in wet clumps of she-oak needles and even shreds of rag.

Jed’s skin grew cold. The flash flood must have caught Mattie as she picked banksia cones. ‘It grabbed me from behind, Mummy.’

Not a dog. A sudden wall of water, crashing her daughter down, pulling her back with it down the hill.

Maxi had crept up to Jed’s feet, head still on paws, as if apologising, knowing she had wounded the most precious person in her universe, trying to make Jed understand.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. But she had to get both her daughter and her dog — her wonderful, incredible dog — up to the house in case the flood rose again. There might still be another surge from a cloudburst far upstream.

She carried the still-shivering Mattie up to the veranda, then looked for Maxi. But the old dog hadn’t followed them. Jed lay Mattie on the banana lounge, then ran back, lifted Maxi awkwardly, for the old dog had failed in her struggle to stand when she saw her coming, and laid her on the sofa in the living room, then sat next to her, cuddling her daughter on her lap. Maxi licked Mattie’s feet while Jed examined her arm — teeth marks, bleeding only a little now, though Maxi must have had to hold hard to stop Mattie being swept away.

Mattie had had her tetanus shot, but Jed hurried for the iodine, the plasters, not because the small marks needed plasters, but to save herself from seeing them, seeing what might have been, how a river wave could whip up into your garden, snatch your daughter and fall back. She kissed Maxi’s head as she sat next to them again. Maxi had already curled herself protectively around Mattie. ‘Good dog,’ Jed muttered, trying not to cry. ‘Good, good dog.’

Maxi flattened her head to be patted, as if she understood. She shivered too.