Sensing his genuine interest, she tried to answer honestly, though the question was closer to the bone than she liked. ‘I think it’s knowing they all care about me,’ she said slowly. ‘Sophie’s more like a favourite aunt than a cousin, but the boys have sort of adopted me as – well, a sister, I suppose. It’s been’— she searched for a word that fell somewhere between ‘hard’ and ‘devastating’ to describe the past two years—‘difficult, you know.’ Once, her heart mourned, once upon a time . . . She shook the memories aside, saying, ‘They’ve been there for me from the start. Like family. So,’ she added, firmly changing the subject. ‘What about you? Where did you grow up, and were you a happy kid?’

‘I was a lucky one.’ Connor swung the wheel to skirt a fallen branch. ‘I’ll shift that on the way back. My father died when I was a nipper, but my grandfather filled the gap. He was pretty young still, and as I was only three when my father went, and Gramps lived in the next street, I just transferred the bond I’d had with my dad to him. He turned up for everything – birthday parties, footy practice, parenting night, the time I got into trouble at school . . . Most of the kids thought he was my father.’

‘And your mother never remarried?’

‘Nope. Dad was her one and only, she always said.’

‘That’s sad,’ Tilly observed. ‘What did your grandfather do?’

‘For a living? He was a nurseryman.’ Connor grinned. ‘I was potting plants by the time I was ten. It was a fun way to fill the weekends, till I got older. It sucked a bit then, of course, I had other interests, but I never got over my fascination for plants.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, our interests broaden as we grow, and teenagers rebel. But you obviously came back to it?’

‘Mmm. I took biological sciences at university and majored in botany. I’ve never regretted it.’ He pointed ahead where the suddenly sandy track curved through tall, clumpy grasses and low scrub. ‘The coastline’s just through there. Fancy a stroll along the beach?’

Chapter Nine

The Gulf was flat, the tide out. Pausing where the sand began, Tilly drew in a lungful of warm, salty air and scanned the wide, curving bay whose shores were as flat as the distant sea. Sunlight winked on wet sandbars and the shallow channels between them where sea-water lingered. There was no breeze. Insects buzzed amid the stalky grass clumps and the hardy convulvulus vines sprawling over humps in the sand. The wind must build them, she thought vaguely; there seemed no other way to account for their existence. On the horizon, sea and sky met so closely she had to blink to tell the difference.

‘Well, I can’t see that many boaties would get in here,’ she observed. ‘You could wade out for miles, it’s so shallow.’