The following morning, with the grey light barely showing in the east and before the earliest bird had uttered a sound, a vehicle roared between the sheds and pulled up by the homestead. Tilly was awake but relishing the last fifteen minutes in the warmth of her blankets. Pulling a robe around her and with only her bedsocks to cushion her feet from the freezing vinyl, she hurried to the kitchen just as Luke erupted into it.

‘Luke! What on earth . . .?’ Gazing beyond him, she saw he’d left the Toyota running, lights on and with its driver’s door swinging open, the logo on it catching the light spilling from the kitchen window. ‘Something wrong?’

‘It’s Jane.’ His eyes were wild. ‘She’s in a bad way. Her dad’s bringing her in. Ring the flying doctor.’

‘Right, of course, but I have to know what to tell him. What’s happened and when?’

‘Christ, what difference does when make?’ he bellowed. ‘She needs a doctor. Like, now!’

‘All right, settle down, Luke.’ An air of calm entered the room with Sophie. ‘You’re not helping by yelling. Tilly’s right.’ She scooped her hair back from her face and finished tying the cord on her dressing gown. ‘First we need to see her. Is that them now?’ Lights cut through the crepuscular dawn as the second vehicle pulled in. ‘What’s the patient’s name and age? He’ll want to know that.’ She’d pulled the pad from beside the phone and poised a pen over it.

Luke groaned, gritting his teeth as he raised and lowered his hands. ‘It’s Jane. Jane Wellaway. She’s nineteen. Her father woke me, said she was having trouble breathing. Her face is all swollen, and so’s her right arm. She’s sorta drooling, like she can’t swallow and she’s been sick. I think something bit her. There looks to be a mark on her hand – there’s a lump there, like a really big one, hard as a rock. I put a pressure bandage on her arm, just in case.’ He swallowed, suddenly looking very young and frightened. ‘If it’s snakebite . . .’

‘We don’t know that,’ Sophie said briskly. ‘Could be a scorpion.’

Tilly ran to hold the door open as a partly bald man, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, with a strained look on his weathered face and his arm around a young woman’s shoulders, half-carried her into the room.

‘Here.’ Luke seized a chair. ‘Put her here, Don. How is she?’

‘As you see.’ The girl seemed hardly conscious. Her limbs flopped loosely and her head drooped, a thin stream of saliva issuing from her lips. The man wiped it up with a handkerchief, speaking softly to her, then looked at the women. ‘Please – she needs medical help.’