Murphy’s feet scrabbled against the cliff. He couldn’t find purchase. Their sweaty hands were starting to slip. Murphy gripped Con’s forearm with his other hand. Con slid forward another inch.

‘My weight is gonna pull you over,’ shouted Murphy. ‘You have to let me go.’

‘Shove your heroics up your arse!’

‘You have to find Jasmine.’ Murphy slowly took his hand off Con’s forearm.

‘You absolute cockhead!’ Con reached down with his other hand and gripped Murphy’s shirt. ‘Don’t let go!’ Murphy let go of him, but Con held tighter. ‘Don’t you bloody dare!’

A strange, detached peace had swollen in Murphy’s chest.

And then Madison was there, hair blowing in the wind, her arms reaching down and pulling on Murphy’s shirt. ‘This is not what Jasmine wants. Jasmine needs you!’

Murphy’s peace grew tattered at the edges, a ripped white flag. The terror of the drop began to fill him. A long fall and a painful end. Never seeing Jasmine again.

Sara wouldn’t ask me to do that, would she?

He scrabbled for purchase again, grabbing Con’s arms, suddenly hooking his boot over a small rocky spike that hadn’t been there before.

Wind and sky, rock and death. Lichen, a feather caught in a spiderweb.

‘Push, Murphy!’ shouted Con.

‘I am bloody pushing!’ shouted Murphy.

His hand landed on another rock, he found more purchase for his boots, and with Con and Madison’s help he scrambled until his forearms were over the edge. His fingers dug into the earth, his strength pulling him up to his armpits.

The wind; the bluffs; the laugh of a kookaburra.

Gunfire in the distance.

Con grabbed one arm, Madison the other, and Murphy slid forward, grazing his belly on the sharp rocks.

He rolled the last little way on his side, away from the fall, pressed down into the ground. Gravity was his comfort again, the red dirt home.

The wind blew past his ear. He looked up.

Con lay on his back, his scraped and bloody arms over his eyes, chest rising and falling rapidly. Madison was in a ball beside them, bawling, blood running from her nose, bruises down her arms, her black school shoes broken at the strap.

Silence.

Then fury from Con, sitting up. ‘You gave up! We’re this close to finding Jasmine and you were giving up?’

‘I dreamed about falling from a cliff,’ said Murphy. ‘Over and over. I thought it was my time to die.’

‘That’s the thing about dreams, mate,’ said Con, panting, slumping back onto the ground. ‘They’re not bloody real.’

CHAPTER 53

CON

Con let himself have a minute more to relive the terror of all three of them almost dying. Then he pulled himself upright.

Gabriella and Eliza were nowhere to be seen, but the earlier gunshot had come from deep in the trees.