The doctor nodded. Put down his notepad, did not dispute anything Ned had said. Just leaned back in his chair, and asked Ned about what life had been like before his wife was dying. Ned stared at the doctor. Didn’t know what was happening. Clammed up. It’s all right, the doctor told him. You’re clearly in fine health. But you’ve paid for this appointment, so we may as well have a chat.

Ned, seeing the logic, relented. Began answering the questions: what he enjoyed, what made him happy, what made him relaxed. He wasn’t used to talking like this, but he gave it a shot. What made him angry, what made him upset. The doctor nodded along, taking no notes. Then, with gentleness, in an offhand tone, he asked Ned to ponder why these things made him happy and relaxed and angry and upset. Why he was the way he was.

Ned baulked. I don’t know, he said. No bloody idea. Who knows these things? I grow apples. I look after my family. I don’t hate a beer or two. I’m like everyone else where I’m from.

Then tell me about that, said the doctor. What it’s like where you’re from.

Ned said he didn’t see the point. Try anyway, asked the doctor. What harm can it do?

So he did. He tried. He spoke about the valley. About Limberlost. Didn’t mention his parents or siblings, didn’t want to be analysed like that. Mostly he talked about Callie, because that’s why he was there. About the long love of their marriage.

That’s what it was, he said to the doctor. I mean, that’s what it is, a love that has endured and strengthened—I don’t need to explain it, do I? Without her, Ned felt like he wasn’t fully there. Like he’d been watered down. Light milk.

She knows everything about me, he said. Always has. He’d never been able to keep a secret from her. Not in the marriage, not since they were children. They’d known each other that long, he told the quiet doctor. He could never hide a thing from her, not even the quoll he once accidentally trapped. Striking little fellow. She helped him care for it, release it. Maybe that was the start of it, he told the doctor. Hard to know. But he’d always appreciated it. Just as he’d appreciated how she’d come to tell him what had happened to his boat. Had come to say it to his face.