‘I’d like to see that part of the place – the caves and the City – one day,’ Tilly had said, but so far it had never happened. Everyone was busy during the dry season and in summer there was the heat, the insects and boggy roads to dampen one’s taste for exploring. Last summer had been her first in the Gulf and she hadn’t enjoyed it. Perhaps this year she would go home to Mallacoota to see her parents – well, her mother; her stepfather had travelled so far from them he might as well have been in another country.

Tilly had no siblings and, as a child, had found her stepfather incomprehensible. An enigmatic man, he was given to bouts of depression followed by fervent but short-lived enthusiams as unsettling, by their frenetic nature, as his previous gloom. He had been an unreliable parent, his path strewn with broken promises and sudden rages. She had learnt early not to depend upon him, and they had become as strangers long before dementia claimed him. But her mother loved him – or she had. Perhaps it was only duty that held her now. Tilly sighed, wondering in her secret heart if she still loved Gerry. If he were to turn up on the doorstep now, after all the anger and grief and heartache she had suffered, would she be able to forgive him and fall into his arms? She honestly didn’t know.

Sophie’s arrival from the joeys’ pen put an end to her ruminations. Her cousin was frowning as she rinsed and sterilised the bottles.

Tilly slanted a look at her. ‘Something wrong?’

‘The little feller’s scouring a bit. I’ve put him in a new bag. Maybe you could mix an egg through his next feed? See if it helps.’

‘Will do. But you said he was fine yesterday. Is the Pretty Face okay?’

‘Seems to be. Course the little one was always weaker. Well’—she dumped the last teat in the sterilising fluid—‘if he makes it, he makes it. We can only do our best.’ But she would feel it if the joey died, Tilly knew. For all her tough, no-nonsense approach to living, Sophie loved the orphans they raised and took every death as a personal failure.

Luke came in then, dark hair damp from the shower. ‘We gonna need the chainsaw today, boss?’

‘Yes.’ Sophie filled her cup from the teapot and sat down. ‘Both whipper snippers too, and plenty of fuel. You can’t even see where the firepits are. We might take the paint as well and give the stones a touch-up.’ The campground sites were marked by whitewashed rocks that faded over summer. ‘Do you want a job, Tilly?’

‘Why? What do you need done?’