As a rule Sal loved storms, but this one was right overhead and, as she finished washing the pots and tidying up after supper, she felt suddenly very vulnerable. One strike of lightning could start a fire in the dry tinder on the forest floor and they would be trapped. For the first time in her life she wished she was in Morgan’s Reach, where there was at least a remote chance of escaping.

She looked across at Max, seeking comfort and reassurance, but in that single glance she realised his fear was far greater than any that possessed her.

Max was huddled into the corner of the couch, his face ashen, his eyes haunted as he ignored the whining dog and shivered and cringed at every crash of thunder and clatter of shutter.

Sal swiftly crossed the room and drew him into a tight embrace. ‘It’s all right,’ she said above the awful noise. ‘The storm will pass soon.’

He clung to her as the dog continued to whine and paw at his leg. ‘The noise,’ he moaned. ‘I can’t stand the noise. Make it stop. Please make it stop.’

She drew him closer, feeling the tremors run through him as he clutched at her and buried his face in her neck. She didn’t know what to say or what to do, for Max had always been so calm, so at ease with his solitude and his surroundings. He’d been her rock, her steadfast mentor and friend – the only man she’d ever truly loved. And now he was like a terrified child, fighting demons that only he could see.

Yet his vulnerability strengthened her, made her forget her own terrors in her need to soothe him. ‘It will pass,’ she murmured into his hair. ‘Soon it will be all over and—’

‘That’s what they said back in 1914,’ he gasped as a particularly loud crash of thunder shook the very foundations of the cabin. ‘All over before Christmas. But it went on and on and on …’ He curled into her, his strong fingers digging in, his whole body trembling. ‘They’re coming,’ he rasped. ‘I can hear the guns – the mortar fire – the screams of the dying in the mud. Oh, God, have mercy.’

Sal felt her own hot tears course down her face as she held the terrified man and tried to imagine the scenes that must be playing in his mind as the thunder continued to rock the very earth beneath the little cabin. She knew so little of his past, but those few words had given her some idea of what must be haunting him. Max was of an age to have been in the so-called ‘war to end all wars’. Had he been on the front line at Gallipoli and Ypres – a witness to the horrors of the trenches like so many young Australians of his generation?