Nancy looked out the window, at the view that was always the same and always different. Just now a shrike thrush pulled at a spiderweb in the corner of the window, and a new shred of bark trailed from the closest of the old red gums, leaving the layer below temporarily pale pink. ‘I loved Gran so much. My life was full every time I was with her. It never occurred to me then that maybe having me with her wasn’t enough to make her fulfilled and totally happy too.’

Jed smiled. ‘Probably she was when she was with you.’

‘Nice to think so. But as the years have gone by — even talking about all this stuff to you — I’ve realised how it’s impossible for anyone today, probably, to understand what life was like for Rose Clancy. That’s not even her real name — the one she was given at birth — we’ll never know that, or the ones she might have acquired later from her own people. I probably have second or third cousins who don’t even know I exist, just as I don’t know about them. Did her parents survive when she was kidnapped by the Clancys? Were the woman and the man her parents, or older people, who felt it their duty to make sure she returned? She spoke of blood in the dust — did that mean they were killed? She must have known, but she never told me.’

‘Some things need to be remembered, but not necessarily relived,’ said Jed quietly. ‘I’ve learned that about my own life. It’s been important to let people I love know things were bad when I was young, but not give them details they’d then have to relive too. I suspect your gran did that with you.’

‘Maybe.’ Nancy needed to think about this, absorb it. Think about how much, and how, she’d teach Jed and Mattie too.

She also needed to let Jed know, tactfully, that there were things you were allowed to know, but that you did not necessarily have the right to pass on to others, especially to those who had never felt the soil and wind, never tasted the water of the land she wrote about. This wasn’t because Jed wasn’t Indigenous. Being Indigenous was another matter entirely. No, it was because one who lived country had the right and a need to understand it, but Jed would need to rein in her desire to pass knowledge to others till Nancy was very sure she understood what she was teaching — and how that teaching might be used. ‘I wish Scarlett could be with us too. There was so much I wanted to teach her, but never got the chance. She had to spend so much time at her rehab, then her school and uni work . . .’

Suddenly she had an idea. What darling Scarlett would call an incredible idea.