She found the telephone under a stack of maps and picked up the receiver before realising she didn’t know the phone number at The Mulgas, and this wasn’t the old party-line system where you just got the exchange to put you through.

Beck laughed at herself for expecting nothing to have changed out here, remembering how she and Doris used to have a code when they used the line that anyone on this side of Kippen could listen in on.

‘Do you smell bad breath, Rebecca?’ Doris would say, as politely as possible.

‘You know, I think I do,’ Beck would reply, outdoing her sister-in-law’s posh accent, and they’d hear the soft click as whoever it was decided to mind their own business.

But that was when Doris still had a sense of humour. Now, Beck needed to contact The Mulgas and arrange for Alan to be ready to leave for the city that morning. Daniel would be in a rage about Jamie not staying with him, and that would be all her fault, so she wasn’t about to turn up unannounced.

As she went to open the door, Beck heard someone in the kitchen, so she paused. No crap from Doris, not today, she was determined about that.

But it was only Bill quietly setting the kettle onto the stove. Beck pulled her dressing gown closed, did it up at the waist and cleared her throat as she went to join him.

‘Morning,’ he whispered, flicking his eyebrows up.

‘Good morning. I was trying to use the phone,’ Beck said, motioning to his office door with her arm. ‘Without waking Doris.’

He nodded. ‘Cuppa tea?’ he asked, reaching for a second mug.

She nodded. ‘I need to phone Daniel to get Alan ready.’

Bill spooned the tea into the pot. ‘Got to get over to Glen Alpine and slash the grass, get it looking good for the newlyweds on their return from the Gold Coast,’ he said, and winked. ‘I’ll get Daniel on the line and tell him to drop Alan up there with his bags. Young fella can give me a bit of a hand while you finish packing.’

‘Let me do that,’ she said, checking on how close the kettle was to boiling.

He nodded and went for his office. Good old Bill.

By the time Beck was on her second cup, Doris was up and flicking the radio on.

‘You should catch the weather forecast. If you’re going across the plains, you’ll want to know if it’s rained down there,’ she said.

Beck downed her tea, washed and dried her cup before her former sister-in-law could do it for her. ‘Heard it at six,’ she said. ‘No rain forecast for the plains until after midnight. We’ll be back home by then.’