‘Evie gave it to me.’ She flicked the cover over so he could read the title, realising her voice shook a little as she spoke.

‘Hmm.’ Ian looked back at the road, silent for a while. ‘Don’t tell me you actually want a house and to be in one place all the time? You knew you weren’t going to get that with me.’

‘I know. I’m fine. Probably just tired.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. What she really wanted to say was: Yes! Yes, she did want a house, with a pretty sitting room and a nursery for the babies. A bathroom she didn’t have to share with men she didn’t know and a pillow that wasn’t lumpy.

Ian reached over and put his hand on her knee. ‘Sweet Rosie, are you okay? Did the pains hurt that much?’

‘They’re pretty scary,’ Rose admitted.

‘You know I love you, don’t you? This life on the road, going from shed to shed—it’s the way it is. You know I don’t want to be confined to one town. That’s why I came to Australia. You didn’t want that either.’

Rose glanced over at her husband—the tall, dark-haired Irishman she had fallen in love with the first day she saw him walk into the local pub in Ballarat, two years ago. He’d been working in a shed and come into town to let off a bit of steam. She’d been working behind the bar.

Ian had ended up sitting down one end of the bar that night, talking to her as much as he could. By the time the shed was finished, two weeks later, she’d handed in her resignation and said goodbye to her parents, leaving in the passenger seat of the Kingwood.

Her mother had been horrified. ‘You’ve only just met him.’ That was the first thing she’d said.

‘Think of the family name—you leaving with him and not being married.’ Her father had frowned deeply. With his role as a lay preacher in the Baptist Church, Rose could only imagine what he’d think this was doing to his Christian image, and he hadn’t left her in any doubt of what he thought of her decision. ‘Living together and not being married is against God’s law, and no daughter of mine will be seen to be involved in such sin.’

And, finally, they had both agreed: ‘Rose, you’ll be back here begging us to take you in within weeks. Well, my girl, if you leave, don’t think that will happen.’

That had been that. Rose, the daughter who had never rebelled, against her family or society, had picked up her bag and walked away from the tidy front yard, with its lilly-pilly hedge fence and green lawn that her father mowed every Saturday afternoon.