I was immediately granted police bail, thanks to Hamish—who also negotiated my bail conditions. I was allowed to live with Dad before the trial, since there was no point staying in Otford. I’d been suspended from my job and I couldn’t leave the house without attracting attention. Joyce seemed to have supporters everywhere. I decided Otford wasn’t big enough for both of us, so I left and never went back.

As it turned out, Joyce soon did the same thing, but I didn’t know that. I was in Kempsey by then, quietly falling apart.

After fifteen months, I was finally acquitted. I never returned to teaching, though, because no one wanted me. Even false allegations remain on your record when you work for the Education Department, and there were plenty of other desperate teachers out there. Why employ someone with a scandal hanging over her, even if there was no conviction?

I decided to become a builder instead. I did some TAFE courses and received a lot of training from Dad, who persuaded some of his friends to offer me casual work on construction sites. But I’d barely secured my licence before he had a stroke one day while he was fixing his neighbour’s laundry door.

I nursed him for two years until a second stroke finally killed him. It was so quick that I didn’t have time to say goodbye. I walked out of his bedroom to fetch his pills and when I came back, he was dead.

You don’t recover from something like that in a hurry.

His house had been mortgaged to pay legal and medical bills, so I was left with nothing when I sold it. I didn’t want to stay in Kempsey—not without my father. In Otford I was the woman who’d beaten up a six-year-old. In Kempsey I still felt like the girl whose mother had stepped in front of a freight train. I’d gone to Sydney in the first place because I was sick of people watching me, wondering if I was going to crack up too.

Small towns. Small bloody towns.

The job on Finch Island surfaced when I was clutching at straws; I heard about it from one of my father’s friends, who turned it down because it paid peanuts. The salary wasn’t an issue for me. I had the right background (carpentry, plumbing, school camps). I also had the right personality. ‘Are you comfortable living an isolated life?’ I was asked at the interview. I didn’t admit that after everything I’d been through, I was much happier on my own. I just said something about being an introvert, and got hired.