When he saw Telle he asked her why she’d told his father about the boat. She smiled. Soaked the dirt at her feet with dregs of tea.

‘Have you tried lying to him?’

Ned pictured the ever-open wound of his father’s face.

As he left, Telle told him the mare was nearly healed.

~

There was no warning about the boat’s arrival, no ceremony to the occasion. Falmouth and another man who resembled him but without the haunted features, perhaps a brother or cousin, dumped it in the paddock nearest the driveway. Ned saw it happen from the orchard. He watched as they untied the straps holding the dinghy to the flat tray of the truck, then levered it onto the ground. They didn’t do it violently, but neither did they approach the task with care. The boat smacked into the soil, rocked on its keel. Looked like it was held together with glue and twine. Ned felt a sheet of regret fall over him. The boat would sink, might even fall apart as soon as he touched it. The moment it hit the dirt Falmouth and his relative got back in the truck and left.

It looked like bad news, there in the afternoon’s light, even once it had stopped rocking. It looked worn and dangerous—tired at best. But when Ned approached it, he recognised what had struck him that first time in Falmouth’s yard: the clean lines of its shape, the comforting sturdiness, the lager sheen of the wood blinking from beneath the old paint. Hope again edged through him.

In a pile of rusting refuse beside the shed, among tyres and ancient chains and long grass, he found what had once been a cart, or perhaps a small buggy. It was a wreck, but it had two wheels and an axle that remained intact. He rolled it over to the boat, where he lifted the bow onto the axle and secured it with a few lengths of rope. When he raised the stern the whole thing wobbled, and the boat threatened to slide off the buggy. But it was light—far lighter than he’d expected. If he moved slowly he was able to push the contraption forward, and if he dodged the more obvious divots and gullies he was able to keep the boat from shaking free. Down the orchard he rolled, piloting the boat over dry earth. Down to the waterline, through the track his father had made in the bracken, to the half-finished boatshed.