Jed grinned. ‘You had me so caught up I totally forgot why I came over.’ She reached into a handbag the size of a small suitcase, rummaged around among a bag of emergency chocolate sultanas, a slightly shrivelled apple, the hundred dockets still to be sent to the accountant, a handkerchief and a cardigan while Nancy’s mind raced.

It was the one scheme that might actually bring Scarlett home, where she belonged, doing the work she loved, work that needed to be done. And it would take months for her and Moira to set up too, just as they’d set up River View together so long ago, then they’d need to oversee it, appoint directors, cajole Jim and Thompson’s Industries into at least partly funding it, now they no longer had to fund River View. A project to fulfil her now the boys were becoming independent . . .

‘Here,’ said Jed at last, holding out an envelope only slightly stained with chocolate.

Nancy put on her glasses and reached for the letter.

Jed grinned and held it away from her. ‘See if you can guess.’

‘I’m far too old for guessing games. Give!’

Jed passed her the letter, also marked with a splodge of what looked like Blue’s marmalade. ‘Scarlett’s engaged!’

Chapter 62

Chapter 62

The value of bush pigeons

Follow the flight of pigeons just before dusk. They will almost always lead to a good water source. Pigeons fly to water, then walk back. Never shoot a bush pigeon: they may save your life.

OVERFLOW, 1958

ROSE

The owl sat by her bedside on the veranda every night now. It was not calling her nor announcing her death. She knew that death was coming. The owl was simply there, with her, as it and its relatives had been all her life. But now, as her body and her mind grew weaker, the owl had come to her, as she could no longer go to it.

She smiled. The past didn’t die, she thought. It lived, always, all around you. Clancy was here still, her mother and all the aunties, her father and the men. Even Ben, the boy he had been as well as the man executed as a prisoner of war, for when you saw time settle across the land you saw all of time, not just the small box that held the present.

But she wouldn’t let her body die tonight. Benjamin would want to be with her when breath finally left her body — her son still felt the anguish of not having been able to protect his boy. He needed to feel he protected his mother in her last hours. Men did need to feel protective, even when there was nothing that you needed protecting from, especially her death now. And Mary would want to be there, and Nancy and Michael.