‘Mucking about,’ he answered, getting out of the chair and coming over to her.

As Zara put her arms around him, she had to control her emotions. His shoulders were bony, while his stomach protruded and was abnormally hard. His face was puffy from the steroids. In the last month, it seemed to her, he’d become weaker and even thinner. There wasn’t much of him left to hug. She knew from Lynda that he wasn’t eating much. It made him feel sick and she guessed this was from the positioning of the tumours around his stomach. It made her angry, but she couldn’t show that to Will.

‘What’s with the gate? No one warned me about that!’ she asked again, letting go of him.

‘Great invention, yeah?’ he said, sitting back down.

Zara noticed he puffed a little as he did so. Again, she said nothing.

‘I bought it online. Look, here.’ He tapped at the computer and brought up a screen, which was similar to footage from a security camera. She could see the front gate in one shot, two different troughs in two different locations, and the last screen showed the dam.

He pointed to the front gate. ‘There’s a sensor that sets off an alarm when a car pulls up at the gate. I check who it is and then open the gate to let them through. If I’m not here, the gate can still be opened, and I get a record of numberplates.’

‘Oh, so you couldn’t see me waving to you? Just the numberplate?’

‘I saw you, but it also takes a photo of the numberplate.’ Will looked pleased with himself.

Zara frowned. ‘What’s with the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Are there problems with trespassers? Is there something I should know about?’

‘Not at all, unless you count the Jehovah’s Witnesses who visit once a year. Nah, I originally bought it so I could monitor the troughs and water points. When I was having treatment, as much as I wanted to jump in the ute and get outside, there were days I just couldn’t, and in summer up here, that’s no good. Mum could’ve done it, but she was looking after me and I didn’t want her under any more pressure. I had all the paddock cameras fitted in the last six months, but only just got the gate one. Didn’t think to tell you about it.’

‘I’ve heard of large stations with this type of technology,’ Zara answered as she pulled up a chair and sat next to her brother. ‘Does it work as well as they say? I’ve always had some concerns that you can only see what’s in the frame of the picture. You won’t see stock that might be weak or sick outside the camera’s view.’

‘It’s certainly not the be all and end all. The most fertile thing on a farm is the owner’s feet, that’s for sure. But just for making sure the water is okay, that the pump is working and so on, it’s pretty good. So here …’ He hit another couple of buttons and brought up another screen. ‘This is the trough in the paddock we call South Nine. Remember, over on the boundary of John and Bec Hamilton?’