It had taken her the first two years of her course to see a body as just a body and not break her heart over each one, so that now she sometimes forgot other people hadn’t been through that process. ‘No. Well, yes, technically, but he was ninety-six and he’d had two heart attacks, and heart failure might have led to kidney failure anyway, or at least be a contributing cause . . . What’s for dinner?’

‘Moussaka.’ He took out the frying pan, slopped in olive oil, put it on low and began to chop eggplant.

‘Yum. Why don’t you ever cook any Maori dishes?’

‘I am. Mum’s Maori and she makes moussaka. I brought up some of her chocolate peppermint cake too.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Sure. But we can’t have a hangi here — an earth oven. Maybe I’ll make one when I have a place of my own eventually. This flat also has a serious lack of hot springs to simmer baskets of food in and that is basically all I know about Maori cooking, because Mum grew up in Bondi.’ William grinned at her. ‘Recipes aren’t handed down in the DNA, you know. Also Dad liked a hundred and one ways with mince.’

‘Okay, I get it. And I love your moussaka.’

‘Good.’ He scattered the lamb mince over the pan and began to brown it. ‘The cake’s in my bag if you want a slice.’

‘High cholesterol, high calorie, high sugar and high fat.’

‘And you love it.’

‘True.’ And neither of them had high cholesterol nor a problem with fat. William was almost all pure bone and muscle, every gorgeous two metres of him . . .

She stood, again carefully, put the kettle on, stuck teabags in two mugs and a slice of cake each on two plates, then poured in the water and carried her own tea and cake back to the sofa. ‘So how was your day?’

‘Mostly maths. But I managed.’ William had never seriously considered he’d ever have a chance to study architecture until the Whitlam government not just abolished fees, but gave full-time students an allowance — not much of one, but enough to survive on with free rent, plus work at the Whole Australia Factory in the holidays. But without doing advanced maths, he had only just scraped in as a mature-aged student. Maths was his weak point.

‘Need a hand?’

‘I can manage. Thank goodness there’s just one more term of it.’ He layered the cooked mince with eggplant, zucchini, canned tomato puree, chopped cloves of garlic and a generous scattering of oregano leaves from his mum’s garden at the old manager’s house back at Drinkwater, and began to make the white sauce topping. Scarlett gazed at his giant hands, so competently doing their work.

‘Your mum taught you well.’

‘She’s done a lot for me. Last few years have been hard for her.’