‘Yeah. He was pretty awful.’

‘And they still have a monument up to him in the park.’

‘I know.’

‘He spread a rumour that a young white girl—I think she was fourteen?—was seen held captive by a tribe out here. Never mind that nobody else saw any evidence of it happening. And so he sent out a decree of sorts, just written on napkins and distributed in the town, asking that if any black person were to be happened upon they were to be asked some serious questions, in any manner the asker deemed necessary. A lot of Aboriginal people were roughed up. So a couple of McAndrew’s diary entries say. You never know the real thing though, do you? At least one Aboriginal was killed. Out here, on Snake Island. They found him hanging over a branch of a tree, like a sack of potatoes. That’s what McAndrew said. That was his metaphor.’

She fell silent. He looked at the cans of spaghetti, saw an edge blackened. He went to their tent. Inside their pack he found the tongs. Walking back to the fire he said, ‘I didn’t know any of that.’

‘Well. You know how Margie takes an interest in it. She told me all about it.’

‘You’ve never told me about it.’

She didn’t respond. He turned the cans of spaghetti, moved them a little out of the flames.

‘I always felt funny about this place. Still do. It feels ugly. Like it remembers what happened. And who knows what else.’

‘So that’s why you’ve never come camping out here with me?’

She nodded.

He added, ‘Lotta things like that happened, all over the Earth.’

‘Yeah. They did. They do.’

‘I don’t think the Earth has any memory. I think each person is a person and that’s it. And all decisions they make are theirs. Nobody else’s. Not some made up ancient violence the Earth somehow remembers. I don’t get this idea we’re supposed to blame the world we live in for the actions we take.’

She said, ‘I think it remembers. I think we’re all infected with it.’

‘Get off it.’

She glared. ‘Don’t you think there’s more to us than this?’ She waved her hand around at the trees, at the shore a distance from them, at the fire. ‘I can’t believe that we’re nothing more than this. That there’s no . . . anything else. Things can’t just be this.’

He poked at the fire. ‘I’ve fought in a war, Pen. I’ve seen men die. Without reason. No glory, not doing anything remarkable. Weymouth died having a laugh, telling a dirty joke I won’t repeat. And he was shot. If there’s more than this—if God exists like Kelly says—then you’ll need to explain to me how things like that make sense. Because they don’t. They just can’t.’

She took a moment. ‘I think God’s the only thing to give me hope in all of that. What hope is there without him?’ She breathed. ‘I know it’s silly, but I dream of Mark sometimes. I dream I held him. Before he died. When I wake up every morning I pray God exists. Because then I might get to yet.’