Dan thought of Rowena as his mother. She was the only family he had left. That was another reason the baby that he and Paula were expecting was so important to him. He’d grown up an only child with a father who’d never recovered from the loss of his wife. Rowena had worked hard to make their home a happy one and he was very grateful for that. But Dan was determined that this baby, his and Paula’s, would be brought up without the gloomy shadows of the past. Wood Dell gave them a fresh start.

They’d had a rough patch not long after their wedding when Paula thought he’d had a child with his ex, Katherine. Paula had returned to her parents in Sydney and he’d been terrified she’d left him. Her pregnancy had come as a big surprise considering they’d each thought the other didn’t want children. They’d done a lot of talking since then, opened up to each other and everything was fine now. They both hoped there would be more children.

He wiped his hands on an old towel. Rowena had work towels and bathroom towels and he wouldn’t dare use the wrong one. Paula didn’t care which towels he used but he still kept an old one in the laundry at their house. He couldn’t bring himself to wipe his hands on the new pale towels Paula filled the bathroom with.

He walked in his socks through the kitchen into the sunroom where his aunt had laid out a lunch of homemade sausage rolls and sandwiches on the cosy little table. She was sitting near the window, frowning over a letter.

“This looks good,” he said. “Thanks for the invite.”

Rowena glanced up and waved him to his old seat. “Help yourself. I’ll make a pot of tea.” She folded the letter and slipped it under her plate. “How are the crops looking?”

Dan took some sausage rolls and poured sauce on to his plate from the little china jug provided. He hated the daintiness of it. He never knew how to hold it. Paula used the sauce straight from the bottle, which suited him fine. “We’ll be lucky to get half our annual yield,” he said through a mouthful. “That bit of rain at the end of August wasn’t enough. It’ll be hardly worth getting out the harvester.”

“Everything all right with that?”

“So far. There are a few tight bearings on the harvester wheels. Tom is getting better at pulling things apart and putting them back together.”

“I’d forgotten he was with you today. I should have offered him lunch.”