‘Doesn’t Anthea tipple?’

He was looking at her, sipping his own drink as he addressed her.

‘No,’ she answered breathily. ‘Only sometimes, that is.’

For she remembered the gins she had drunk on the Island.

‘All to the good,’ said Hessell Mortlock. ‘Moderation in everything.’

Dad kept looking at his own feet. He was at his wryest that evening, as though his family embarrassed him – or was it his friend?

Anthea would have liked to make some witty remark in the presence of two men, but Hessell Mortlock seemed content to set out again into the past, this time on a journey he had made with Bill to Mount Isa.

Presently she excused herself.

‘I must go in,’ she explained, ‘and help with the meal.’

All her remarks seemed to her that evening breathier than usual, more colourless. But she sensed he was looking at her calves when she did not actually see.

From the kitchen she noticed the car standing beside their own in the garage. By comparison it looked most exotic. It was a bottle-green, and must have been freshly washed. She could imagine Mr Mortlock take out a note from a crocodile – yes, a crocodile – wallet, and hand it to an anonymous attendant in overalls.

‘Is that the car?’ she asked her mother, hoping to involve her.

But Mrs Scudamore might not have heard. She continued having difficulty with a shape, trying to unmould it, ostentatiously single-handed, while her daughter failed to offer assistance.

The evening proceeded. It was what her friends on the Island, Anthea was sure, would have found a boring one, but that did not prevent her enjoying the figure Mr Mortlock cut. In his moulded suit. His rather broad shoulders. His hair of that sandiness to which grey is kind, merging and fading into the original shade. Where the scalp showed through, besides, the hair was so sensibly arranged. Not even Mollie Aspinall could have turned Mr Mortlock’s head into a sarcastic joke.

‘I expect you are tired,’ Mrs Scudamore said at last, as though she had a sore throat.

‘Not exactly,’ Mr Mortlock replied, ‘but ready.’

He was so tactful. With his hands, and the blood-stone ring, spread on his knee-caps.

That night Anthea Scudamore cleaned her teeth with energetic gaiety. She was glad she didn’t go in for make-up, not enough to notice; she had nothing to hide.

Were her parents hiding something, though?

‘He’s your friend,’ Mummy was saying.

‘The old coot! Can’t think what I ever saw in him.’

‘But a successful man. Of some distinction.’

Mummy at least valued distinction.

‘Flattered a poor Brisbane clot.’

‘And so considerate. Very few men of Mr Mortlock’s age would take trouble with a young girl.’

Anthea could not resist pausing in the passage.

‘Brenda was quite a bit younger than old Hess. Brenda walked out on him because ...’

‘I understand she behaved very badly.’ Mrs Scudamore repeated a lesson learnt.

Anthea realized she was listening-in, and went immediately to her room.