Eileen sighed. Old friendships and the first scent of gin always made her nostalgic.

‘It’s stopped raining,’ she said, and sighed.

‘Arch well?’ Jum asked.

As if he cared. She had let the ice get into the cocktail, turning it almost to pure water.

‘He has his trouble,’ Nora said. ‘You know, his back.’

Daring them to have forgotten.

Nora loved Arch. It made Eileen feel ashamed.

So fortunate for them to have discovered each other. Nora Leadbeatter and Arch Mackenzie. Two such bores. And with bird-watching in common. Though Eileen Wheeler had never believed Nora did not make herself learn to like watching birds.

At Goulburn, in the early days, Nora would come out to Glen Davie sometimes to be with Eileen at week-ends. Mr Leadbeatter had been manager at the Wales for a while. He always saw that his daughter had the cleanest notes. Nora was shy, but better than nothing, and the two girls would sit about on the veranda those summer evenings, buffing their nails, and listening to the sheep cough in the home paddock. Eileen gave Nora lessons in making-up. Nora had protested, but was pleased.

‘Mother well, darling?’ Eileen asked, sipping that sad, watery gin.

‘Not exactly well,’ Nora replied, painfully.

Because she had been to Orange, to visit her widowed mother, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

‘You know what I mean, dear,’ said Eileen.

Jum was dropping his ash on the carpet. It might be better when poor bloody Arch came down.

‘I have an idea that woman, that Mrs Galloway, is unkind to her,’ Nora said.

‘Get another,’ Eileen advised. ‘It isn’t like after the War.’

‘One can never be sure,’ Nora debated. ‘One would hate to hurt the woman’s feelings.’

Seated in the dusk Nora Mackenzie was of a moth colour. Her face looked as though she had been rubbing it with chalk. Might have, too, in spite of those lessons in make-up. She sat and twisted her hands together.

How very red Nora’s hands had been, at Goulburn, at the convent, to which the two girls had gone. Not that they belonged to those. It was only convenient. Nora’s hands had been red and trembly after practising a tarantella, early, in the frost. So very early all of that. Eileen had learnt about life shortly after puberty. She had tried to tell Nora one or two things, but Nora did not want to hear. Oh, no, no, please, Eileen, Nora cried. As though a boy had been twisting her arm. She had those long, entreating, sensitive hands.

And there they were still. Twisting together, making their excuses. For what they had never done.

Arch came in then. He turned on the lights, which made Nora wince, even those lights which barely existed in all the neutrality of Nora’s room. Nora did not comment, but smiled, because it was Arch who had committed the crime.

Arch said:

‘You two toping hard as usual.’

He poured himself the rest of the cocktail.