Rebecca nodded and headed back to the door. ‘I’ll go and see if he’s with Gran,’ she said.

‘You worry too much over that boy,’ said Hugh through a vast yawn. ‘He’ll be ten tomorrow, and he knows his way around the bush.’

Rebecca and her mother exchanged knowing looks, for they shared the same worry over Danny – and it had very little to do with his familiarity with the bush and its dangers. ‘That’s as maybe,’ she replied, ‘but he’s running wild, and it’s time he learned to do as he’s told.’

She left the homestead and crossed the deserted main street to the house on the corner. Granny Gwyn lived in a neat one-storey wooden stilt-house which faced the hospital but backed onto the bush, and Danny loved going over there to help look after Gwyneth’s menagerie of sick and abandoned animals, and to listen to her many stories about the old days. If he wasn’t there, then she’d have to go and see Sarah at the native shacks on the far side of the town to see if her son, Billy Blue, had disappeared too. The pair of them were always going off together, and she wouldn’t mind betting they were up to some mischief or other.

As she was about to unlatch the gate she heard the unmistakable roar of a fast-moving truck. Turning, she realised it was Ben Freeman, the local fire chief, and as he screeched to a halt beside her he covered her in a cloud of dust.

Despite her pleasure at seeing him, she greeted him with a frown. ‘Thanks, Ben,’ she muttered, trying to shake the worst of the dirt from her apron and dress. ‘These were clean on this morning, and now I’m going to have to change before I go back on the ward.’

‘Sorry, Becky,’ he drawled as he swung out of the utility and ambled over to her.

He didn’t look a bit sorry – not with that stupid grin on his face. But it was a grin that made her heart flutter and sent a thrill right through her, so she supposed she would have to forgive him. ‘What’s the rush anyway?’ she asked, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked from the boots and moleskins, past the check shirt straining across the broad chest and up to his face.

‘I wanted to catch you on your lunch break,’ he replied, his very blue eyes regarding her from beneath the broad brim of his bush hat. ‘I wondered if you and Danny might like to come up to my place for some tucker this evening?’

‘That would be good, Ben, but Danny’s gone walkabout again, and when I do find him, he’ll be confined to his room for the rest of the day.’ She smiled up at him to soften her refusal. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps another time?’