But hopefully they also knew to be tactful about it. No use ruffling feathers when people wanted to celebrate. Just point out the truth, now and then, pass on knowledge as best you could. There was so much men’s expertise and wisdom she couldn’t give Tom and Clancy, but thank goodness Pete Sampson had been able to help there. And Pete had sons, and they had sons . . .

She’d explained the land as best she could to Scarlett, to Jed, to all the River View children who had stayed, however briefly, at Overflow. It wasn’t enough. Most of the knowledge that belonged to the land around here had little meaning even a hundred kilometres away. And of the two girls she thought of as daughters, Scarlett was across the world and Jed lost in tapping out her books . . .

‘Cooee! It’s only me.’ Jed dropped a plate of double-layer chocolate cake on the table and hugged her. She wore maternity jeans and a shirt today, not one of Matilda’s creations, her bump finally showing. ‘Welcome home again.’

‘Thanks. Where’s Mattie?’

‘Gone to find Clancy.’

Nancy frowned. ‘I think he’s over at the shearing shed, or maybe down by the river.’

‘She’ll find him. She always does.’

Nancy smiled as Jed helped herself to a peppermint teabag, then sat opposite her. Once this woman would have been scared that sudden disaster would hurt her child as it had her husband. Once she had not even known how to hug.

‘You looked far away,’ Jed added.

‘I was. Thinking of Gran and all she never had time to tell me. I only had twelve years with her, after I came home from Malaya after the war. Not enough.’

‘It’s never enough time with those we love.’

‘Yes, but I meant . . .’ Nancy struggled for words. ‘I thought I knew the land when I left home to go droving. And I did, in a way — Gran had taught me to actually look, to see, to listen. She’d taught me other things too.’

‘As you’ve taught me.’

‘Not enough,’ said Nancy frankly.

‘Then teach me more.’

‘You’re busy with your books . . .’

‘Where do you think they come from, if not here?’

Nancy did not admit she still hadn’t read them. She didn’t read much. She particularly did not want to read about the women she had known, the land she understood. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she temporised.

‘Well, they do. And I don’t just mean the plots, who did what and when. The books are about the land as much as the people. And maybe people reading them will understand a bit more . . . or even know how much they don’t know, what there is to know.’