‘How should I know?’ Ben protested. ‘And who’s Saul Cooper anyway? Have I met him yet?’

I fished for an answer, my mouth opening and closing.

‘Oh, he’s, he’s, no one very interesting,’ I said eventually.

I agreed to the date at the Billet House and began mentally preparing myself. I pictured a crude dwelling, lacking the basics of table and chairs. There would be a dirt floor, a fire and the straw beds of a lions’ den. Luke Signal would circle me with the rest of the pride, ready to report back to my father. She’s not steering clear of that coycrock teacher like you told her to, you know.

I had never not followed my father’s advice.

‘Keep your head down, do as I say, and you’ll be fine.’ This was the refrain of my teenage years and I didn’t question it. I was starting to realise what Paul had meant when he said Dad was making sure everything worked out all right for me and not for him. There had been no corresponding mantra guaranteeing Paul’s safety in return for obedience.

On the day of the lunch with my parents, I helped Dad check the snares. Mum was fretful that he would otherwise miss this meal and not see his own daughter on her birthday, so preoccupied was he with his war against the ever-burgeoning fox population. Mary and Luke had worked too many weekends lately. Dad couldn’t ask them again without having to explain himself to the estate for the extra overtime expenditure.

With my help, the job would be done faster and I could – as per Mum’s instructions – stop him from getting engrossed in the fixing of something else, steering him home by 1 p.m. I could also stop him wandering into the workers’ shed by the dog runs for a tea break that would lapse into a quick nap. Mary had let slip to Mum that Dad had been caught regularly sleeping on the job.

We parked up on land beyond the old Reunyon Farmstead, where the red-haired newcomers had moved in. There had been complaints that the woman and her daughter had not done any of the work they had promised, but even from this distance, progress was clear. Beds of soil had been shaped and turned, wild hedgerows tamed. Wood cladding still hung loose from the face of the building and the balusters of the veranda remained broken and splintered, but that was a huge task to undertake – too much for just one woman and a child. I wondered why the Council hadn’t offered to send over Mark and Andy Cater to help. The brothers could have lodged in one of the many spare bedrooms, given the women some feeling of security out there on the isolated west coast, then maybe she’d have felt happier letting her girl go off to school.