‘Okay. Let’s make a move, then.’ Shaun turned back to me. ‘So we’ll see you in ten minutes? On the parade ground?’

He was talking about the open stretch of grass that lay between the old male and female compounds. The dirt road from the jetty ended right there, in front of the dining hall.

I nodded. ‘Who’s that kid in the black T-shirt? The droopy one with hair all over his face?’

Shaun glanced towards the campers, who were retreating down the jetty. I could almost hear gears clicking as he worked his way through a mental list. ‘That’s Darren,’ he said at last. ‘Darren King. Why? Do you know him?’

Darren? ‘Maybe.’ I needed another look.

‘His mum’ll be at the passing-out parade. Sue King? Ring a bell?’ When I shook my head, Shaun started moving off. ‘This won’t take long,’ he told me over his shoulder. ‘We’ll run through the usual introductions. And if there’s anything you want to say…’

‘One of the toilets is broken. There’s a sign on the door.’ I was waiting for a replacement fill valve.

Shaun raised his hand without looking back. Rhys had already flung both mooring lines at the deckhand, who was closing the starboard gate as the Kooringal pulled away from me. The horn sounded once, twice, three times. Shaun shouted an order.

I stood for a moment, gazing at the ferry’s white wake. Darren? Aaron?

Weird.

All my deliveries came by ferry because I lived on Finch Island—or, more correctly, Buangan Pa. It had once been a lazaret. Half the old buildings had collapsed; the rest of them, lovingly restored, had been turned into a fairly basic camping and conference centre. The fences were gone. Nine lepers’ huts were now fully furnished cabins. The men’s dining hall was still a dining hall, but the women’s had become a dormitory, as had the hospital.

Every building had been constructed in that ubiquitous pre-war government style of white weatherboard, deep verandas and generous windows. Even the lepers’ huts had their own little verandas, though not in the Aboriginal compound. If you were a black leper, you were given a hut made of corrugated iron with a concrete floor and no glass in the windows.

Those huts were pretty grim. They were at the very rear of the complex, not far from the cemetery, and shielded from the other buildings by a thicket of she-oak. I had a feeling my employer didn’t want to advertise their existence. They were heritage listed so they had to be well maintained, but they were embarrassing. Shameful.