His story meandered and stalled as we reached the Cooper property, Juniper Hall, perched on its rise and cut from a sandstone bluff at the back, a great fig tree towering over it. I led him along the path that skirted the main residence and ended at my quarters among the other staff. I tied the mare off, brushed her down. She dropped her head and ran her mouth over my hand: when I pushed back, she snuffled and shook her mane. It was a habit now, a paying of the fare for coming to town, though I knew her to love the walk anyway. I gestured to the Hindoo man that he should enter and he hesitated. When he relented, he made a point of removing his shoes.

Inside I stirred up the morning’s coals, hooked the kettle on the idleback and swung it over the new fire. I cleared the clutter from the table to find space for his cup: fabrics I’d been sewing, plates with old food adhering, the books—Lord, the books. I watched the man’s eyes wander over the space, taking in the chaos, trying to assemble something from it.

‘I teach,’ I said to him, by way of heading off the inquiry.

‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Your mother is a very clever woman. Something you inherited from her, perhaps?’

I must have reacted—did I bristle?—because he seemed startled at my reaction.

‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘Have I…?’

‘Was. She is deceased, Mister…Srinivas. Many years ago now.’

‘Oh dear me, I am sorry. So sorry.’ He dropped his head and when it lifted his face had crumpled. ‘I did not expect…I knew her briefly. She was very good to me.’

My hands had taken to fussing with the bottles and glasses on the bench. All of this was ill-advised. A stranger in my house, a stranger tugging at strings tied to the past. As usual, I hadn’t thought this through. ‘Any other painful subjects you wish to raise?’

‘I can only apologise,’ he sighed. Waited. Came to a decision. ‘Yes, there is one.’

‘It was a rhetorical question.’

‘I need your father.’

‘Need him?’

‘I need him to do something for me.’

I shrugged, determined to give nothing away. But the bitterness stung my mouth now.

‘What sort of thing?’

‘I have lost a boat, miss. A boat full of valuable things—livestock, timber and, most tragically, people. A crew, passengers.’

‘Where did you lose your boat?’

‘Bass’s Strait. She was two hundred forty-three tons, a hundred foot long. The Howrah.’

‘That’s a substantial vessel, sir. Rather careless to…lose such a thing.’

He spoke again in a way that was addressed more to himself than to me. It seemed a habit of his. ‘Maybe I should have expected this. It was passing through those islands…Where the Sydney Cove was wrecked.’