But then there were his daughters. Sharp little whips of children he could hardly believe were his. He didn’t say a lot to them; the way they whirled about his life didn’t leave much room for comment. But he did what he could, what he knew how to do, and he didn’t deny them much, which wasn’t as hard it might have been—after his trip to Britain his orchard had done well, and the family was comfortable. The new variety of spray had allowed his apples to thrive, had meant his crops were larger, the yields more predictable. A marvellous invention—a poison that filled his trees with life. Other orchardists in the valley, the ones who hadn’t bought in to the spray, had given up. Thousands of apple trees had been wrenched out and replaced with vines. People wanted wine at the table these days. Ned remained happy with beer. The odd brandy, if the situation called for it.

When Sally was twelve, Grace eleven and Harriet seven, they found a kitten in a knot of blackberries: a tawny, skittish thing. Ned had no time for cats, but he tolerated it. When they asked him to let it in the house, he usually did. When they asked him to buy it food, he did. When their mother had gone to see a doctor in Launceston—she’d torn a muscle in her chest while carrying in the washing—and they wanted him to bring the cat to school when he picked them up, he did.

He’d known it was a foolish idea while wrestling the cat into the truck, claws snagging on his forearms, in the webbing of his fingers. His conviction grew even stronger when the cat, anxious and mad in the flying prison of the truck, climbed onto his headrest and pissed down his neck. By the time he was at the school gates he was a figure of bleeding, stinking rage, and all he could say to his frightened daughters—they’d never seen him lose his temper before—was that the bloody cat had to go; it was a menace, a terror; it was harder to control than the quoll he’d once had, and that had been a proper animal, proper wild.

On the way back to the orchard, the cat now stretched across their laps, his girls began to relax. They stroked at its shivers. They sniffed the acrid air. They asked him: What quoll? Quolls aren’t pets, Dad.