‘Sorry, Em, he’s up on lookout, but he won’t be long.’ He smiled back at her. ‘Something smells good,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘Jake’s a lucky bloke.’

She flushed with pleasure and dipped her chin as she continued to knead the bread dough. ‘My mum always said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,’ she said shyly. ‘Was there something you wanted, Ben?’

‘I’m trying to track down Danny and Billy,’ he said, his gaze falling on a batch of iced fairy cakes.

‘They were here earlier,’ she replied, handing him two of the little treats. ‘Said they were going up to the caves and did I have any spare cake.’ She smiled up at him. ‘That’s the second batch today. They took half the other one.’

‘About what time was this?’ he asked through a mouthful of deliciously light sponge and lemon icing.

She shrugged plump shoulders and wiped her hands on the apron which covered her cotton dress. ‘About ten or eleven, I think.’ She frowned. ‘Why?’

‘No real reason,’ he replied carefully. ‘I just wondered where they’d got to.’

She raised a fine dark brow and eyed him thoughtfully. ‘I know Danny has a habit of going walkabout, Ben – but most boys do. He’ll turn up, no worries.’

Ben plucked another cake from the plate, dodged her playful slap and left her to her cooking. As he headed for the utility truck he looked up at the darkening sky. It was unbearably hot, the clouds low and thunderous, the atmosphere heavy with menace. Flies buzzed and flitted about his face, but the only other sound he could hear was the rasp of his own boots on the gravel as he approached the truck and climbed into the furnace of the cab.

Slamming the door on the flies, he drove down the street, collected his boxes of supplies from Annie’s and then headed for the relative shelter of the surrounding bush.

The engine whined and the cans and spare parts rattled in the back alongside the boxes of supplies as he negotiated the steep winding track to the top of the hill and finally pulled up by Eagle Rock. The cloud was thicker up here, clinging to the tops of the trees in a dark mist of red and grey and black.

He carefully clambered down to the caves and switched on the torch. The camp looked unchanged, but he saw there were four of Emily’s little cakes tucked into a tin box alongside the rather stale bread, and another note which was similarly worded to the first.

He stood and thought about what he should do, and then decided he was probably making something out of nothing. He would keep an eye on the cave and, if John Miller did show up, then he’d have a talk with him and find out exactly what he was up to.