He took a deep breath, shook off Grace’s smile, shook Callie from his head and tried to focus on the question. A response began forming in him. Be serious, he wanted to say to them. You don’t just give away an orchard. It’s not what people do. Where would we have gone? Do you know how hard your mother and I worked for that place? Do you understand the blood and sweat we put into it? Did you not enjoy your childhood on that property, in that valley, on the banks of that river—of kanamaluka? Do you understand how lucky you’ve been?

He was annoyed—by his daughters’ impertinence, by the question’s implication, and by how it had distracted him from what he was there to do. If he didn’t tell them about Callie now, with a bit of beer in him, he might never be able to get it out. Yet he also felt uneasy. Grace and Sally didn’t know what they were talking about, he told himself. They were young, still children in many ways. But there it was: the nag of unease. The sting of truth.

He thought of how he’d prided himself on learning about the Letteremairrener people, and the Panninher who’d also lived in the valley, and the other tribes all over the island. He knew what had happened to them; he’d read Robinson’s diaries when they were published; he was aware of what had been done. But he’d treated it all as history. In the course of his own life, he had done nothing about it.

So instead of bristling, instead of shouting, he just took a drink, faced Sally and said: ‘No—no, we never thought about anything like that.’