‘Yes!’ Sheila said. ‘I read about that. All that music brought to life. I love Baz Luhrmann. Has he cast it yet?’

‘I heard there was to be open casting for the indigenous kids,’ Dora said.

Ali said, ‘Look, for all we know, it might never get made. Can we talk about something else?’

‘But, Alison,’ Sheila said, ‘you’re a raging success, darling. A working-class lass with the world at her feet.’

‘Hardly. I’m a cog in the machine.’

‘What will you do with all your riches?’ This was Dora, half-cut now, and oblivious to Ali’s discomfort. ‘Will you buy a racehorse? A Maserati? A huge place by the sea at Port Willunga?’

‘Ooh yes, Mum, do that,’ Stella said.

‘No,’ Ali said slowly, allowing an idea to take shape. ‘I’m going to give the money away.’

Sheila laughed heartily, certain this was only a line to silence them all. ‘Don’t do that, sweetheart. Just look at Stella’s face, look how much she wants the beach house.’

‘No, I’m serious,’ Ali said. ‘I’m having a eureka moment here.’

The McCormack coffers needed no help from Ali Connor. But if she was making a fortune from the musicians she’d invented, why not use it to fund some real ones? She remembered a night, a long time ago now, out with Cass at a gig in Port Adelaide: a Pitjantjatjara girl on stage, intense, absorbed, a singer-songwriter with lyrics, some in her own language, that pulsed with a kind of poetic fury, a performer evidently blessed with such astounding musicality that Cass, when the girl ended her set, had started a standing ovation, whipping the small crowd into communal rapture. Ali had seen her perform many times since then, but it was that first night, that girl, her music: they had planted the seeds, perhaps ten years before Ali wrote it, of Tell the Story, Sing the Song. And now, here she was, with the power to bring about a perfect ending in the real world. She felt a sudden and wonderful lightness of spirit, a sort of resolute optimism, as if nothing was beyond her. She smiled at her daughter, lovely Stella, who wouldn’t smile back, not yet, not while her mother was being so weird.

‘It’s all going to be fine, darling,’ Ali said. ‘It’s all going to be great.’