Sometimes — only sometimes — he tried to imagine Clementine still lived, that when he returned to Overflow she’d run towards him, all long legs and freckles, demanding he watch her ride her pony or see her painting of the hills . . .

‘Would you like to borrow the book?’ asked Andrew Paterson, breaking into his reverie.

Clancy looked at him in surprise — books weren’t just valuable but rare out here. He nodded. Shearers were often eccentrics — Mad Bull Bolton had a pet rat he kept in a box, and Snowy Pearson would bite the head off mice when drunk, in return for a glass of rum to take the taste away. His shearing mates would accept the even greater eccentricity of reading. ‘Thanks. I’d like to. We’re off the day after tomorrow though. I’ll leave the book on the veranda if I don’t see you.’

‘Why don’t you join us for dinner?’

The boy wasn’t the son of the owner, whose name was Griggs. Didn’t the boy know a guest couldn’t invite a guest to dinner?

‘Griggsy is a friend,’ Andrew Paterson added. ‘We were at school together. And his people will be glad of a fresh face and conversation.’

True enough, thought Clancy. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘If Mrs Griggs has no objection.’

He shaved . . . now that was an eccentricity and he had to put up with the ribbing — ‘What sheep is the lucky girl tonight?’ He had no evening clothes with him, of course, but he did have a pair of decent trousers and a going-to-town shirt, a waistcoat, jacket and even a bow tie — though he didn’t put that last one on till he was climbing the steps.

To his surprise he enjoyed the evening: liked the company, Mr and Mrs Griggs, Griggsy, the same age as Andrew, Alice, fourteen and fluttering her lashes at the young man from Sydney. Clancy enjoyed the dinner too, dining well instead of shovelling in chops, Irish stew, roast mutton, grilled mutton and a hundred variations on flour, sugar and mutton fat in johnny cakes, brownie, lardy bread as well as the endless damper.

Soup — how long had it been since he’d had the luxury of a food that was mostly liquid? This was chicken consommé, with a little sherry added, and delicious. Yabbies as a fish course, not boiled in an old kerosene tin and eaten off a nail, still with the faint tang of kero, but already shelled and served with Sauce Nantua garnished with watercress. He had not seen garnish in years either.