The baby was moving now and I could feel the tiny flutter of life; a small, tentative movement to alert me to his presence, his curled life within me, slowly growing into the person he will be. And the person he will be will want to know his family and his English roots and his grandmother.

I knew, in the moment I stood by the bed my mother would sleep in, that I wanted them to know each other. I couldn’t deprive either of a relationship I had needed in my childhood.

I stared out to the yachts in the bay, beyond the garden Jack and I had created out of jungle, and remembered how hard I sometimes thought my grandmother was on my mother, yet I could do no wrong. I went out onto the balcony and breathed deeply, the sun warm on my face, and I swore that I would try my hardest to welcome my mother. She was obviously lonely without Fergus and seemed to have thrown herself into painting and studying the history of art.

I smiled. Fleur was quite brave really, to start again on something new at her age. I will be nice. I will. Jack was right, it was time to move on. After all, I didn’t know when I’d see her again.

I went downstairs and put my hat on against the sun and set off for my jungle trail. We had joined an experiment to cull the possums. They were ripping the trees to pieces and Jack and I had placed poison as small enticements, fixed to the trunks of trees.

I wished they weren’t so cute. I wished they looked like rats and then I wouldn’t feel so bad. But I knew it had to be done, we had more than enough stripped trees that were going to die on our land.

As I walked I felt a sense of achievement; it was an adventure, this life I shared with Jack. There were years ahead of us, preserving and finding new ways of conserving land that could never be tamed, nor would we want it to be. All these acres were becoming familiar, becoming home after years of nomadic existence. I never thought I could settle anywhere.

I hadn’t planned to get pregnant, although I knew time was ticking. There was so much to do and pregnancy had reined me in. Jack’s face was enough, though, when I’d told him. So instead of gardening in the heat I could only walk round checking things, feeding the hens and gently weeding up near the house, planting rows of vegetables that struggled in the poor soil.

As if by some tacit agreement, neither Jack nor I mentioned it to each other, but we both wondered if our time here would have to come to an end with a child. We lived in the middle of nowhere, miles away from a doctor, school or human habitation. Children needed other children and I didn’t want an only child, which is what I had become.