I could not, not ever. It was that simple. To think otherwise was torture and madness.

Argyle took a new thread and continued his stitching over the beloved face. Over my father’s forehead, closing and closing as the pale cloth swallowed him up.

~

Tarenorerer made her few brief preparations in the afternoon, when the fire had nearly extinguished itself. She found food and water in the galley and made herself a meal, then whistled to one of the nearby boats. They sent a rower who waited below us, tied off in the deep shade by the hull. It was only when I looked down from the rail that I realised there were two figures in the little boat: the second of them was the boy, Neelanjan. Srinivas’s son. We had overlooked him—I suppose everyone had.

‘Do you want to come aboard?’ I called down.

‘I think he does, ma’am,’ said the rower. ‘He don’t speak much.’

Miss, I thought. ‘Send him up.’

The lad drew the boat over to the Moonbird’s rope ladder and scaled it. Both hands took the rungs: he had nothing with him. When he stood before me on the deck I saw the strong resemblance he bore to his father, in all but one respect: his eyes were blue. He held my gaze, proud and devastated, eyes just higher than mine. Now we were kin, fatherless within hours of each other.

‘Do you wish to come to Sydney?’ I asked him, and he nodded faintly in response. And from that face that evoked at least two continents came a voice that was entirely local.

‘I have been taught to crew a boat, ma’am.’

Tarenorerer waited by the mast beyond his young shoulder, obdurate as the granite. ‘Where will you go?’ I asked her.

‘Keep movin,’ she waved her fingers vaguely east. ‘Robinson’s mob gonna keep lookin. Batman’s mob. Gotta stay ahead of em.’

She must have seen the worry on my face. ‘Dumb bastards. Not that hard, eh.’ And suddenly her face was alight with a smile I had never seen, beautiful teeth and a warmth in her eyes. She looked now at the island, jerked her chin faintly at the hill. ‘That man…’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t know where you found him but you wanna leave im there. If you lucky he won’t foller you back.’

She placed her hands on my shoulders now, looked directly into my eyes. ‘I’m sad for you, miss. Sad about your father.’ The parcelled hammock lay on the ground beside us but neither of us looked at it. ‘He was a good man and you’re a good daughter.’