She led them to a drawing room. It had been entirely redecorated since he had seen it last, so many decades ago: polished floors, vast comfortable sofas, velvet curtains he imagined were always kept pulled back — this woman would not want to lose either the sunlight or the night air — more Persian carpets, another vase, this one filled with roses. He had not seen a vase of roses either, since Rosemere.

This room did not have the elegance of Rosemere, but it had the comfort of Overflow as well as a style and beauty he realised no room at Overflow would ever have. ‘Indoors’ for Rose would always just be a place of use and comfort, an image from magazines and catalogues. True beauty would always be the land outside. This was a room to be happy in, a room whose windows joined the indoors with the land outside.

A young woman in the long white apron of a cook–housekeeper brought them tea: a tray with silver teapot and sugar bowl, fine china cups and saucers, a jug of lemon barley water, glasses, a plate of small cakes covered in desiccated coconut. ‘Lamingtons!’ said Matilda. ‘Thank you, Mrs Taylor. There’ll be four of us for lunch.’

This woman must be the daughter-in-law of the man and woman who had once worked at Overflow, Clancy realised. She gave the grin of a cook who is finally going to have the chance to strut her stuff. She had carefully shown no surprise at the colour of Rose’s skin, nor at her moleskins, shirt and boots. Possibly a little too carefully — probably Matilda had told her who was there. But Mr Sampson and his wife presumably dined there sometimes too, though, once again, only when old Drinkwater had his meal on a tray.

‘Dined’. How long had it been since he had even thought that word?

‘I’ve never seen a lamington before.’ They were the first words Rose had spoken.

‘Oh, they are the latest thing. From Queensland, I think, and named after Lady Lamington, the patroness of Mrs Schauer’s cookery school. Try one, please.’ Matilda passed the plate over. ‘How do you take your tea?’

‘Black, two sugars for us both,’ said Clancy as Matilda handed Benjamin a glass of lemon barley water. Clancy bit into the lamington. Chocolate icing, butter cake below, entirely delicious, but small enough to be eaten without a cake fork. An admirable invention, possibly as useful as an electric shearing machine. He caught Rose’s smile as she finished hers and reached for another. Benjamin had already consumed four.

They talked weather, but not in any way it was usually discussed in a drawing room. ‘Ants are collecting twigs,’ Matilda remarked. ‘A thunderstorm tomorrow.’

Rose nodded. ‘Going to be a good one. Snakes are getting snappish — they’ll be fighting each other by tomorrow afternoon. Should have built up by dusk, maybe a bit later.’