And going onto the verandah, we saw the long rubber gloves he had washed and laid out to dry. We examined them clinically, the left and then the right, noting the traces of blood and bovine fluids. Death fascinated us. So did the cruelty of nature, which from then on became linked in my mind with Mr Noffey, who had shot a heifer dead in a field while we slept.

Mr Noffey was Bea’s uncle. He lived in the big house on the farm. He was bearded and scowled a lot because his wife had left him. The night before, he had been stern at the dinner table, reprimanding me for feeding the cocker spaniel.

‘What do you think you’re doing? It’s bad manners and unhygienic.’

I resented the dressing-down. I knew about dogs and bacteria. I had been careful not to touch the spaniel’s mouth under the table, but being too cowed to say anything in my defence, I had to sit there accused of being ill-bred and uncouth.

Heading to the shed, we found Bea’s cousin Benny crashing a Matchbox car into a tyre. Three years younger than Bea and with darker orange hair, he was said to be either special or slow. He wasn’t merely mute but mildly brain-damaged as well, and had a teaching assistant to help him in the classroom. When he heard Bea talking about a swim, he signed to say he wanted to come.

‘Sorry,’ she told him. ‘You won’t fit on the bike.’

He glared at us as we rode off, but we quickly forgot him. Bea doubled me on her Peewee 80, setting her face against the wind. She had the magnificence of a Viking figurehead, except that her hair did not stream out behind her, having been scraped back severely with gel and water. As well as the motorbike, she used to have a pony, but her parents had sold it. Bea had trained Quincy to bite people on the arms, and then he was palmed off on some fools in Bibbenluke, a family who wanted a dressage pony for their son.

We liked to try to climb the ridge, a distant stair-like rise of hills, although we hadn’t yet found a way to the top. We didn’t ask permission. Bea’s parents were away, as they often were. They were keen travellers and even when they were home they lived like expatriates in their own country, full of poetic sentiments about the beauty of the Australian landscape. They had a smaller house on the property, behind a line of trees. When they were away, Bea stayed with her uncle and cousin. She took her parents’ absences as normal; she was very self-sufficient.