The night air was liquid silk and the moon a yellow balloon popping above the horizon. How many times had she and Sam sat out there and watched it rise? Too many to count, and anyway, counting would imply that there would never be another to add to the total . . .

Instead she simply watched, heard Batbat scratching his back down among the apple trees, the soft beat of wallaby feet, eating her rambling roses. And slowly joy crept into her, despite her loss.

She had so much still: love she had never known, never even expected as a child or frightened young woman; security and beauty even in this drought. Her daughter, her family by choice and family by blood, the friends who had cared for her ever since she finally admitted her need for help after Sam’s accident, she who had spent her whole life before Gibber’s Creek without knowing how to ask for help.

Her mind drifted back to Nancy’s story this afternoon. What could have caused Maria’s face to distort like that? And what was the use of having an adopted brilliant sister at medical school if you couldn’t ask her to find out? She walked back to the phone in the hall and dialled.

‘Hello?’ Her younger sister’s voice sounded deeply weary.

‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’

‘Jed? Nothing. Well, I’m a bit tired. Very tired.’

‘Then rest.’ Third year medicine at Sydney Uni, plus a full social life — William Ryan seemed to be spending every weekend up in Sydney — plus Scarlett’s determination to walk almost everywhere these days instead of using the wheelchair she had been bound to all the time until recently . . . no wonder she was tired. Jed glanced at her watch. ‘Sorry, I probably got you out of bed.’

‘I am in bed. William put an extension through into the bedroom. But I wasn’t asleep. What’s up?’

Interesting. William Ryan in Scarlett’s bedroom, though not, it appeared, right now. How long had he spent in there? And doing what, if anything, besides installing the phone?

‘I wanted to ask you a question. Nancy’s just told me about a great-aunt of hers called Maria. Anyway, when Maria was about six years old, her nose started to collapse till she had only one nostril and a bulging cheek. Have you any idea what might have caused it?’

‘Hereditary syphilis? Was she older or younger than Nancy’s grandparent?’

‘Grandfather. Younger.’

‘Then maybe her father caught syphilis after his son was born, but in time for the sister to be infected. But there are lots of other possibilities. Could be tubercular. Leprosy, of course, but that would have affected other parts of her body. Hands and feet okay?’

‘I suppose so. Nancy didn’t say.’

‘They’d have known if she had leprosy back then. Everyone was terrified of it, as there wasn’t a cure before antibiotics were invented. She’d have been quarantined. My best guess is a nasal tumour. How old was she when she died?’