‘Hmm. Let me think. She moved here in the late 1930s as a young bride. She came from money in Sydney, I think. Story goes that she married someone her parents didn’t approve of. I don’t know what happened to him. She died in the early eighties, no, mid-seventies, but I was only a kid. I have sketchy memories of these picnics she used to hold, though they’re pretty legendary with folks around town.’

Mandy poured herself more tea and shadows from the distant gums stretched out across the land as the sun began to drop.

‘Mum used to tell stories of this beautiful old place. No one really knows what happened after she died. She’d hired lawyers from Sydney, like I said at dinner. Plenty of people have sniffed around over the years, made offers on the place. But they were all turned away.’

Nicole wished she could get out her notebook and start writing down the questions pinging around her head. What had happened to Tom? To Ivy? Why had the house stayed empty so long? Why had it never been sold? And how did Charlie fit in?

‘Why the interest?’ Mandy asked, interrupting her thoughts.

‘Every time I meet someone and they find out I’m living here, people talk about her. She must have been really something.’

‘I can ask Mum what she knows. Her lucid days are few and far between, but next time she’s good I can ask.’

‘It’s no big deal.’ Nicole suddenly felt guilty for keeping Ivy’s letters from Mandy. She knew Mandy could help her unravel this mystery faster, but she was still ashamed at having pried.

‘Nah, it’s fine. When Mum’s on form, she likes to talk about the good-ol’ days. You could come with me if you like.’

‘Oh. No. I couldn’t impose.’ A faint yearning stirred inside Nicole. There was that curiosity again. ‘Thank you. But no. And don’t you bother her with it, either.’

‘It would be fine,’ Mandy insisted, but Nicole shook her head. ‘Okay, then,’ she continued. ‘But if you ever change your mind, you let me know.’

Nicole spent the rest of the afternoon alone, scraping peeling paint from the ceiling in the hallway. Afterward she took an evening stroll along the peninsula down towards South Beach. The opposite direction of the boatshed. She didn’t think she could cope with being challenged by Charlie.

As the road wound round the bend back towards the cottage, Nicole was struck by the beauty of the indigo sky fading to pale blue then into a peach that deepened to fire orange at the horizon. The black silhouettes of the scratchy branches and leaves of the gum trees surrounding her looked as if they had been painted there.

For the first time that day she felt peace.