And suddenly the words did come: the young Englishwoman charmed by this vision of affluent colonial life, sunlight after the clouded poverty of her childhood; the handsome man, the sister hiding not just her face but her whole life behind a veil. Jed stopped typing after three pages and took a breath.

And listened.

It was always like this. Retreating into another reality made you better able to see your own. The kitchen table had been sanded back and repolished a dozen times but if you sniffed carefully you could still smell the generations of scones and butter cakes, the roasted stuffed shoulders of lamb, the golden syrup dumplings prepared and eaten on it, for when Nancy and Matilda had furnished this house for her it would never have occurred to them that new would be better than solidly made old.

Jed could almost smell the burned butter of pikelets under the lavender echoes from sachets in the trunks in the attic where the table had rested when it was retired as a growing family needed a larger one. The microwave on her bench was new, but the refrigerator was from Overflow too, now Nancy and Michael didn’t need so much extra food for all the foster children they’d housed and loved on the weekends. And her lino, polished by three generations of house-proud women, glowed a paler yellow along the natural tracks she also took from door, to sink, to back door, to table.

Throughout the house were objects, beautiful, useful objects, that connected her to now and to the past. The broom handle made of red wood, at least fifty years old even if the bristles had been replaced; the first dustpan Matilda had ever owned, circa 1900, solid still and indestructable; the gadget Tommy had made for taking stubborn tops off bottles. Matilda had even left Jed half a century of fashion by Dior, Schiaparelli and clever Sydney seamstresses who had created imitations from pictures in fashion magazines.

She would wear one of Matilda’s dresses tomorrow, Jed decided. The most gorgeous day dress in the cupboards . . . maybe that blue linen sheath with the gold dragons on the hem and the tiny draped jacket that went with it. Was it in the selection she’d brought over to Dribble, or still back at the old homestead in Matilda’s elegant dressing room with the bulk of her wardrobe? She’d find it, and wear it for Sam, even if he couldn’t see it; wear it for Nancy, to remind her of the woman who had been her family’s friend all of her life; wear it for the hospital staff to smile at, even if Mattie did smear mashed banana on it. Matilda had never worried about stains either or, rather, had kept a most useful notebook, also passed to Jed, about how to remove them.

She had forgotten her own dinner. She zapped a slice of Leafsong’s spinach quiche — her extended family now made very sure that the fridge was always full and tempting — grabbed a couple of Blue’s zucchini slices, and took her meal onto the veranda.