Sandra looked a mess, with her fair hair in a tangle and her mascara smudged under her eyes, the inevitable cigarette filling the car with its noxious smoke. ‘The sun’s up and you’ve had enough rest,’ she snapped. ‘I couldn’t sleep a wink, knowing we could be murdered at any minute, and you snoring like a litter of hogs didn’t help.’

He ran his fingers through his light brown hair and yawned. ‘I need a pee and a cup of coffee first,’ he replied. He clambered out of the car, stood on the lip of the storm run-off, unbuttoned his fly and sighed with pleasure as the seemingly endless stream darkened the red earth. Adjusting his clothing, he opened the passenger door and reached past Sandra for the flask of coffee in the glove compartment.

‘It’s all right for you men,’ she muttered as she swung her long legs out of the car and stood up. ‘You can pee anywhere.’

‘There’s nothing to stop you here, and I won’t look,’ he replied, savouring the warm, sweet coffee.

‘It’s getting lighter by the minute,’ she growled through a stream of cigarette smoke. ‘Anyone could come past and see me.’

‘I doubt it. We haven’t seen another vehicle since yesterday morning. Sort yourself out, and then we can get going.’ He moved away from the open car door, turned his back on Sandra, who was still grumbling, went round to the other side and sat on the running board.

The soft croon of the magpies drifted on the warm air as the sun rose into a clear pale sky, and Terence was soothed by the beautiful melody. He’d forgotten how peaceful it was out here and, as he gazed along the deserted road that wound its way through pristine forests and mile upon mile of rolling, empty country, he was surprised at how deeply it affected him.

He’d left Morgan’s Reach sixteen years before to attend medical school and had never really returned but for a week or so in the early years. The city had offered everything he’d thought he’d wanted then, but the war had taken away the gloss, and before he’d realised it he was thirty-five and just another worker in the anthill of Sydney, always in a rush, never stopping to listen to the birds or appreciate a sunrise.