He’d been working too hard, but he sorely wished he could be back at Father’s side right now. Tony imagined some timeless season when the two of them would be about to set light to the wheat stubble, somewhere far away from the farmhouse, just he and Father and a really big burn. They’d stand on top of the ridge while the farmlands blazed long into the night, and they’d make a campfire by one of the tanks and cook up their own tucker. If one of the fires got away, Tony would tell Father to stay in his swag and he’d go and beat the flames flat with a wet sack, or with a spray from his backpack.

He loved those days when the hills were wrapped in smoke. He felt like a powerful shadow, stalking across their land, the hose like some weapon from a storybook.

And when all the hard work was over, Tony knew he could just tell his parents he was off to a mate’s place to help him fix up a shed or something, and just nip over the border to get what he needed with some stranger’s body in the dark.

The best times were when you could convince some good-looking farm boy into the long grass and you could both have it away for as long as you wanted; and he’d had some corkers who’d gone off loud as cockies in gullies and in ditches up and down the border country far from home. There was no way he was ever going to try getting any at the Kippen Bridge, like poor bloody Brian Fryer and all those old fools who sniffed around during the day, waiting for someone desperate enough to take a risk.

Fuck that!

‘Tony?’ Uncle Daniel said, with that stern copper’s gaze that brought him back into the room, where a question Tony hadn’t heard was still hanging in the air.

Aunty Beck turned to him for the answer, and then so did Jamie.

‘I dunno,’ he said, and swallowed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, grabbing his jacket, pushing his uncle out of the way and twisting the door handle.

Beck felt like she’d been shouting at her son for hours, but she still had more to get out.

‘See what you’ve done to Tony?’ she said, noticing how Jamie’s face was starting to mottle with the blood she’d raised in her attempts to slap an answer out of him. ‘Tony and Leanne come up here for a lovely honeymoon, and you run up here after them and spoil it all. What did you think you were going to do?’