“I’ve never been down here,” he said.

I didn’t know either. Yet here was another turning into a track soft with sand, and ahead there would be a slope of tumbled red-stained stone; the road would swerve around it, back into line with the lazy loops of fence wire. And so it did.

Bettina likes to stay in sight of Runagate, don’t you dearest? I only remembered living in town. But I had been here before, and I felt light in my veins.

“What about the men with the geese?” said Trish. “Are we just sightseeing now?”

“If Tina knows this place—” began Gary.

“If,” said Trish.

“—maybe the boys did too. It can’t be coincidence.”

“It can,” said Trish.

When we reached the rusted white gate at the end, I opened the door and dropped to stand on the earth. Dirt sifted between the straps of my sandals. Bird feet had made pale patterns across older prints of tyres. A rusted chain, padlocked, held the gate shut, but the key was kept under a stone at the base of the fencepost. The certainty poured through me like sunshine. I found it at once.

“A key,” said Gary flatly, while I rubbed the rust off my hand.

“You’ve been holding out on us,” said Trish.

But I shook my head. I was only remembering this as we found it, the further we drew from Runagate: along the track rutted and hollowed with braided gullies left by rain, meandering between slim saplings, their squared leaves lit gold. Each turn felt like the beat of my own heart.

Halfway along, Gary stopped. He made us get out so he could pull the seats forward and unlock a long, thin box, from which he took a shotgun, darkly gleaming and beautiful as a snake.

“Just in case,” he said, and looked from one of us to the other.

“Give it to me,” said Trish, and took it with a grimace, although her hands were sure. “Tina isn’t exactly going to be much help.”

“We’re helping Tina,” Gary reminded her, and glanced uncertainly at the scrub, the hills, the sagging fence wires. His breezy confidence had faded. He closed his door quickly, and before we drove on, I heard the echo rolling around the emptiness of the trees.

Howling wilderness, my mother had once called the bush beyond town. Dad had laughed.

My heart sat high in my chest. I was more alive and more scared than I had been for years. Ahead of us, through the gilded saplings and the dense old scrub, we would find it: a house, half-staggering beneath a weight of banksia roses, and a shed, and marvels.