There was the billabong turn-off, where Matilda had seen her swaggie father die and Jed had met the ‘ghost’ of Fred, who’d given her the strength to keep on living.

Would Jed ever write her own story? Probably not, for she would not want Mattie to ever know the terrified child her mother had once been, the monsters as well as the strength that lurked in Mattie’s heritage. But Scarlett was fairly sure parts of Jed’s life were in every book she wrote, just like Batbat — still forcefully demanding carrots — was the hero of the book she was writing for Mattie and the baby to come.

And there was the graveyard fence, still keeping its secrets, and the thistles where the old church had stood. Drinkwater now, its gates decorated with white balloons. The old house was swept once a week, polished once a month, kept as if one day Matilda would return, as well as for Jim’s visits, though his family rarely joined him now. It was a house that was loved, even if not lived in. But as Nancy said, she had two sons and there were two family houses on two family properties, so — maybe — one day both would be lived in again.

Scarlett wondered what Mr Drinkwater had been like as a young man: impetuous, striking out with his mob of sheep in the colony’s worst drought, thinking he could carve an empire and a dynasty, and succeeding, though in ways he’d never dreamed. She would rather have met Auntie Love . . .

Moura now, Matilda’s first property way back in the 1890s, and Auntie Love’s last home; the commune, Halfway to Eternity still in faded letters on its gate, even if it was no longer communal.

So much history in one short drive. And there was the beginning of her own story: the park that had been The River View Rehabilitation Home for Crippled Children. She had learned to hold a spoon there, to sit, strapped to a wheelchair, but most of all, she had learned to be loved as Nancy and Michael cradled her in the weeks after her birth mother abandoned the baby they thought would be helpless all her very short life. It didn’t matter that sometimes in her life she’d need to use a wheelchair again. Dr Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara was entirely happy with who she had become, the person they had all helped her to become.

Michael took her hand. She smiled at him, unable to put her gratitude into words. Nor was there any need.

The car drew up outside the church. Someone had scattered papery yellow everlastings on her path from the car to the church. Leafsong stood waiting on the steps, her dress the same colour as Jed’s. The cicadas yelled as if they were trying to drown out the organ music from inside.

Click.