Juggling these figures tempted him to walk past Beaconsfield’s boatyard. Through the fence he’d be able to see the vast, airy field of watercraft. All dead in the dryness. The dinghies, the skiffs, the daggering hulls of the high-trailered yachts. Timber and paint and cloth and rope and iron and tin. In the half-hour he had spare Ned would be able to write them all into his memory; he’d be able to close his eyes and summon them for months, until summer cooled and fell.

Yet if his father finished his business early he might round the corner and see his son by the fence. Ned’s ambitions would be plain. His father would read him in an instant, and the honourless greed that lay at the heart of Ned’s hunting would be revealed.

That scenario was not something Ned could contemplate without starting to ache. So he criss-crossed the streets of Beaconsfield until it was time to meet at the truck, raising his eyes occasionally to the forested hills, to the tin roofs, the climbing spikes of the machinery that worked the nearby mine.

When he returned to the truck his father was already there. He looked at Ned with a question on his face. Ned hefted his pocket, showing the weight of the coins. His father lifted an eyebrow.

‘You let him take you for a ride?’

‘Asked a price. Got that price.’

The old man drew on a faint, tired smile. ‘Well, you’re either a hard lad or a thick one. Although you don’t seem thick to me.’

Ned was strangled hot and mute by the compliment. In this moment life was not brimming with conflict, his skills not linked to guilt or shame.

His father leaned against a low stone wall, watching light colour the hills. The ledger hung limp in his fingers. When Jackbird’s father arrived, they left.

~

It was nearly dusk when Ned and his father got out of the truck at the same spot where they’d been picked up. His father began walking down the driveway, but Ned was made to linger on the road by something he saw in a near paddock. At first he thought the figure was a scarecrow, but then he saw that it was moving in a careful trudge.

He kept looking. The figure was slender and perhaps his height, although the distance made it hard to tell. A mane of straw-brown hair shook with each step the figure took—Callie. Jackbird’s sister. She held a rake or a hoe, but was not dipping it to the earth. She just walked, her gait measured, back straight, face tilted to the sky. When she turned towards the road Ned saw she wasn’t carrying a tool but a gun.