Her mobile phone beeped. She read the brief message from Dan. He wanted her to collect something from the stock and station agent on her way home. That would mean a detour to the other side of town and she was already on a tight schedule. It was a nuisance but after the conversation she’d overheard in the doctor’s waiting room it was strangely reassuring to get his message. She sighed. If only he’d thought of it earlier, she could have called in before her appointment.

She glanced at her watch. At least the chicken breasts wouldn’t take a lot of preparation but the nibbles she’d planned were a bit of a fiddle and the dessert was only half made. She sent a brief ‘OK’ reply, shoved her phone and her shopping list in her bag and headed for the checkout.

* * *

Rocket lowered himself onto the old blanket Rowena kept for him by the back door. Dan watched him drop his head to his paws and slowly close his eyes. The poor old dog still tried to keep up with Dan wherever he went. Rocket had been with them for fifteen years, a long time for a working dog.

“You rest up, old boy.” Dan should have trained a new pup a couple of years ago but he’d never got around to it. Now he didn’t want to put Rocket through the indignity of a young pup nipping at his heels and gobbling his food. He bent down and gave the dog a gentle pat on the head. “You’ve a bit of work left in you yet, eh Rocket?” The dog opened one eye and his eyebrow went up with it, then he let out a long sigh and closed his eye again.

Dan slipped off his boots and walked through to the bathroom to wash his hands. It was strange how quickly he felt like a visitor in the house he had lived in all his life. When he and Paula had married they had moved into the old house at the other end of Dan and Rowena’s farm, called Wood Dell. It had been built by his great grandparents early in the last century and it had been empty for many years. Now that Rowena was marrying and shifting to Adelaide she had tried to talk Dan and Paula into moving into her more modern house. The main machinery sheds were here beside the newer place, but they had begun to make the old house comfortable and it felt like their home.

This house, where he’d lived with his aunt before he married Paula, had been built for his parents when they married. He didn’t remember his mother. She’d been killed in a car accident when he was young and his aunt had moved in to look after him and his father.