Hirsch nodded. ‘Pretty amazing.’

‘Certainly is,’ Washburn said. He looked at the top of one head, then the other. ‘Clever of you girls to come here.’

The little one, sucking her thumb, burrowed deeper into Washburn’s chest when Hirsch glanced at her. The older girl, Louise, glittered with hostility, waiting for Hirsch to show his true colours. He guessed she was thirteen or fourteen, with the temporary plumpness of early adolescence. Hirsch could picture her carrying Anna over the stony ground, all the way to the dust beside the road at Mischance Creek. He thought of Katie Street. She looked nothing like Katie, but she was similarly self-contained, a kid who played out the available options in her head before she acted. Right now, she was waiting and watching and keeping her trap well shut.

‘Craig, are you sure no one else knows about the dugout?’

Washburn shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen a soul out here, not once, and the entrance is hard to spot from the creek. The girls are safe.’

‘They can’t stay here forever.’

A bird came to the mouth of the dugout, seemed startled to see them and flapped off again in a disturbance of feathers and beaten air. Anna jumped, briefly removed her thumb, sucked it again. Her shortie pyjamas needed a wash. Dust and scratches on her legs and feet.

Hirsch said, ‘Louise, before we work out who does what, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

She continued to scowl at him. She wore pale blue shorts, a white boy-band T-shirt, socks and runners. Her legs were badly scratched. But he thought she gave a faint upwards tilt of her chin. He said, ‘Anna was asleep in bed when it happened, but you were still up?’

This time, the ghost of a nod.

‘When it was safe, you ran inside and grabbed her and carried her across the paddocks? That took a lot of strength and courage.’

Another tiny movement of her chin: pleased for the acknowledgment but not about to be taken for a sucker.

‘What I thinkhappened,’ Hirsch said, ‘it was Christmas Eve and you were in the car-shed with your mum, wrapping the’—he glanced at Anna—‘wrapping a present to go under the tree, when someone arrived. Your mother went out to see who the visitor was, and…’

He trailed away. Louise Rennie finished for him: ‘Mum screamed and there was shooting so I hid under the car.’

Craig Washburn pulled her tighter against him.

‘A pair of sniffer dogs tracked you across the paddocks to the road where someone picked you up,’ Hirsch said, with a glance at Washburn. ‘How did you know to wait just there? How did you know it would be safe?’

‘We didn’t know. We just had to get away. Then a truck came along.’

‘A truck.’

‘A hay truck.’