So he spooled out his relationship with the quoll, from the moment he found it in his trap. He told them how their Aunt Maggie had been worried about her chickens, at a time they couldn’t afford to lose even an egg. How he’d been tempted to kill it. How he perhaps should have, but instead had herded it back to health. He told them of Telle the vet, of her garden and forest. Of keeping the quoll secret, of its gradual recovery, of the paint-like glossiness it gained from feasting on duck eggs. Of the speed and power that flashed unpredictably from its body. Of taking it across the river. Of watching it disappear into high myrtle-shadow.

As Ned told the story, the quoll came back to him. It had long felt like a memory from another life, but now he could again see its red-purple wound, its snapping jaw, its quicksilver movements. Its pink, corrugated footpads. Its brilliant coat. Its fierce presence, filling that summer with a kind of primeval purpose. He suddenly felt very old. Felt the distance between his youth and what he was now. He flexed his wrists, touched his face. Wondered if the troubled boy of that summer would recognise the man he’d become.

His girls, usually inclined to peel away from him the moment they got home, kept up with questions. Did the quoll try to escape? Did it bite him? How big was it? Did he ever see it again? Around the kitchen they went. Around the garden their mother had planted out the back, afternoon light rubbing off a towering wattle. He tried to answer but he’d spent all his emotion in the truck, and he couldn’t get the details of the story straight, or the order of events. Had it bitten him? It must have. Had his father known about it before or after they built the boatshed? Had its leg healed cleanly, as he’d always believed, or would a limp have been inevitable? Now that he was talking about it, he realised that his recollections might not be as clear as he’d assumed.

It was a horrible sensation, feeling that the facts of his life had blurred. He wondered if his past was slipping away, easy as a quoll into a myrtle. He was glad when his wife got home. Glad her presence would distract their daughters, glad normalcy could return to the house. But when she came into the kitchen she gave him a tight smile and he saw how forced her face was, and the tired slump to her shoulders, and the gladness left him.

The girls swarmed her, demanding attention, not knowing why she’d had to go to the city. Dad says he had a pet quoll, they told her. Is it true? Did he ever tell you? Is he making it up?