‘But clever isn’t any different,’ she begged, afraid he might not accept her peculiarity and power.

She would go with a desperate wariness from now. She sensed that, if not in years, she was older than Lum, but this was the secret he must never guess: that for all his strength, all his beauty, she was, and must remain the stronger.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, and touched.

But drew back his hand in self-protection.

‘A scar,’ she said. ‘I cut my wrist opening a tin of condensed milk.’

For once she was glad of the paler seam in her freckled skin, hoping that it might heal a breach.

And he looked at her out of his hard blue Whalley eyes. He liked her. Although she was ugly, and clever, and a girl.

‘Condensed milk on bread,’ he said, ’that’s something I could eat till I bust.’

‘Oh, yes!’ she agreed.

She did honestly believe, although she had never thought of it before.

Flies clustered in irregular jet embroideries on the backs of best suits. Nobody bothered any longer to shrug them off. As Alf Herbert grunted against the shovelfuls, dust clogged increasingly, promises settled thicker. Although they had been told they might expect Christ to redeem, it would have been no less incongruous if He had appeared out of the scrub to perform on altars of burning sandstone, a sacrifice for which nobody had prepared them. In any case, the mourners waited – they had been taught to accept whatever might be imposed – while the heat stupefied the remnants of their minds, and inflated their Australian fingers into foreign-looking sausages.

Myrtle Hogben was the first to protest. She broke down – into the wrong handkerchief. Who shall change our vile body? The words were more than her decency could bear.

‘Easy on it,’ her husband whispered, putting a finger under her elbow.

She submitted to his sympathy, just as in their life together she had submitted to his darker wishes. Never wanting more than peace, and one or two perquisites.

A thin woman, Mrs Hogben continued to cry for all the wrongs what had been done her. For Daise had only made things viler. While understanding, yes, at moments. It was girls who really understood, not even women – sisters, sisters. Before events whirled them apart. So Myrtle Morrow was again walking through the orchard, and Daise Morrow twined her arm around her sister; confession filled the air, together with a scent of crushed fermenting apples. Myrtle said: Daise, there’s something I’d like to do, I’d like to chuck a lemon into a Salvation Army tuba. Daise giggled. You’re a nut, Myrt, she said. But never vile. So Myrtle Hogben cried. Once, only once she thought how she’d like to push someone off a cliff, and watch their expression as it happened. But Myrtle had not confessed that.

So Mrs Hogben cried, for those things she was unable to confess, for anything she might not be able to control.