‘I’m sorry,’ she said, all force gone from her voice. ‘Your mother did try her best. She was only a bit younger than me when she came to live out here. Young enough to need good mothering advice, and smart enough to take it. How long has she been gone now?’

‘Ten years,’ he replied, not prepared to let Rebecca Brandt back in at that moment.

‘I used to laugh at Beck, you know? She would stand out in front of The Mulgas waving a tea towel across the paddock whenever she saw me hanging out the washing. That meant “come over for a scone, bring the kids”,’ Doris said, shaking her head with a smile. ‘There were plenty of good times, Jamie.’

He nodded and made a little hum of approval, knowing it would settle her.

It worked. She washed the past away with a fast mouthful of tea, and got back to business.

‘No, we understand perfectly. You don’t want to take on the farm. Your uncle and I have managed to make a living off wheat and sorghum, but we’ve done it for almost forty years now. You’ve got to cultivate every bit of land you’ve got. No one will be interested in buying unless the place comes with plenty of land.’

‘Listen, Doris, I don’t think we need to be making any hasty decisions about all this.’

‘But there’s five thousand acres of good cropping country along this lane. Someone’s got to work it. If it’s not one of the Brandt boys, then we ought to sell it.’

‘What about Yvonne?’

She hissed and drowned the thought of her daughter with more tea.

‘Tony wouldn’t have wanted you to move.’

‘But that’s precisely what he did want,’ she said. ‘The last time I saw Tony was at the bowling club for the fire brigade fundraiser, and do you know what I thought?’

James was tempted to answer the question for her, but all that came to mind was an old-fashioned screamer no editor would ever run.

Breaking: Grazier’s wife says what she actually fucking thinks.

‘I felt that my son wanted us — his own parents — to just leave him alone. Can you believe it?’

She looked into her cup, head and hands trembling. The only sound was the air she dragged in and out of her nostrils. She seemed intent on giving space for him to answer, with his uncle out of the room.

‘There’s usually a reason for most things, Aunty Doris,’ James offered.

Initially it didn’t look as though she’d heard, or perhaps she also thought it sounded silly calling her that, even though they all did it up here in the country.

But she erupted.

‘What on earth could it be?’ she shouted at her knees, spilling tea on her lap.

He moved fast to catch her cup and saucer.