He groaned and sat up, his eyes bleary with sleep, his chin dark with stubble. ‘What’s happened?’

Jane gave him the details. ‘I’ll make some strong coffee while you get dressed,’ she finished. She hurried back to the kitchen to find Sandra had already started on the coffee. ‘Could you do some sandwiches as well while I go and pack his medical bag and check on the fuel in the …’

She let out a groan as she remembered Hugh had taken the hospital utility. ‘He’ll have to borrow mine,’ she said. ‘At least its fuelled up and there’s emergency equipment and a stretcher already stowed in the back.’

Terence came into the kitchen still looking bedraggled, and Jane left hurriedly to fetch his bag from the hospital.

‘I don’t think you should go,’ said Sandra, buttering rounds of bread and slapping thick slices of cold tinned meat between them. ‘The weather’s turning nasty again and you—’

He gulped down the scalding coffee. ‘The man could be dying,’ he said flatly. ‘Bad weather or not, I have to go to him.’

‘But it’s dangerous,’ she persisted, the tears shining in her eyes. ‘Please, Terry, don’t leave me.’

He finished the cup of coffee and poured the rest of the pot into a thermos flask before wrapping the sandwiches in a sheet of waxed paper and dropping them into the pocket of his jacket which he slung over his arm. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘Until then it wouldn’t do you any harm to get dressed and lend Mum and Becky a hand.’

She folded her arms and looked sullen. ‘So what I want doesn’t matter?’

He reached for his bush hat and planted it over his tangled hair. ‘It would if you weren’t hungover and feeling sorry for yourself,’ he said. ‘Sort yourself out, Sandra,’ he encouraged her, as he gave her the briefest peck on the cheek.

Before she could reply he’d opened the screen door and run down to meet his mother, who was loading his medical bag and a pile of clean blankets and sheets into her dusty ute.

‘I’ll radio in when I can,’ he assured her after he’d checked the cans of fuel and water in the back.

‘You take care out there,’ said Jane. ‘And don’t worry about Sandra. I’ll see she’s right.’ She stepped back as Terence reversed the utility out of the driveway and disappeared in a cloud of dust down the track which led to the main road.

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ said Sandra, who’d come to watch from the doorstep. ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Jane briskly, ‘and I certainly have more to worry about than a silly girl with a hangover. Get dressed, Sandra, and put all that wasted energy into something useful.’