They were quiet for a while. Ned knew he should say something comforting, something reassuring, but he couldn’t make it happen. His mind had been tugged apart and he couldn’t concentrate. The doctor was a quack, he thought, and everything would be fine; these specialists would sort things out, it was probably just one of those infections, nobody was tougher than his wife, everyone knew that, everyone in the whole valley—someone should tell that idiot doctor, this soft doctor who clearly didn’t know what people who didn’t live in cities were made of.

He was still wrenching at his knuckles. A rough snort blew out his nose. He realised he was still breathing too fast. That the air was coming in and out of him all wrong. His wife had put a hand on his arm, and when that didn’t slow him down, she embraced him. I should be holding you, he wanted to say: I should be holding you. Even though there was surely nothing wrong with her.

When he had stilled she let him go, swallowed some brandy and coughed. A normal cough, not one that sounded particularly hard or wet, but it was enough to make Ned reach again for the bottle. Poured more brandy, tried to talk once more. Failed again. His words still stumbling over each other, none finding a way past the wall of panic within him, a rising wall, a wall of blades.

But he wasn’t the only one who’d heard the cough. Harriet stumbled back into the kitchen, tears smudging her face. At first Ned thought she’d heard what his wife had said, had somehow understood what it meant. But it was only that she couldn’t sleep, she told them. She couldn’t stop thinking about the scary animal that Dad was hiding under the house. The scary wild animal. It was going to get her—it was going to eat her.

Callie coughed again. Looked at Ned. An old warmth in her eyes, far-off but unfaded. Tempered by her stiff strength. She pulled their daughter into her lap and stroked the child’s hair, telling her no, there was no scary animal under the house. It had been gone for a long, long time. And it hadn’t been scary at all: it was just a cute quoll, a friendly little fellow that her dad had looked after, and when it was feeling better they’d taken home to its family. Wasn’t that nice? Home to its family. Up in the lovely green trees.

18

18

Ned,

Well, that’s that. You’ve probably seen it in the paper. I imagine the reports aren’t giving much away, but trust you me: the fat lady’s singing and she’s got a loudspeaker.