“Here you are.” He paused. “Everything all right?”

“Fine.” How many times had she said that today? “Fine.” She couldn’t help herself. Resentment seethed inside her. “Everything’s fine.”

Milt opened his mouth, the puzzlement on his face almost comical. Then he changed tack mid-thought. She could read him well. Or at least she’d thought she could. She took a deep breath.

“Milt, I want to—”

“You need to talk to the girls.” He cut her off. “Have you seen the state of the bathroom? There’s not a surface spare, bottles without lids, a line-up of hair machines in the power board, they’ll blow a circuit if they all start up together, and there’re rainbow strands of hair all over the floor and the basin.” He growled but there was no real depth to it.

“You usually wash your hands in the laundry.”

“The trough was full of clothes.”

Natalie thought about the en suite she’d once tried to have added to their bedroom. It had been back when the two older girls had reached teenage years and the bathroom had become a battleground. Milt had raged like a bull at their clutter. After one particularly busy weekend when they’d had girlfriends staying over and he’d raved on to her for ten minutes, Natalie had hatched a plan to build an extra bathroom under the verandah outside their bedroom. Milt had said it was a waste of money and Olive had backed him as she always did. Clem had sat on the fence as he always did. Olive had said they’d always managed with one bathroom. Of course she and Clem were living in the quarters by then and money had already been spent to bring that bathroom up to scratch.

Natalie had even gone in to the bank and organised a personal loan, much to the amusement of the manager at the time who was also a family friend. She was prepared to pay it back out of her teaching wage. Clem had convinced her in his quiet way she’d be wasting her money. Best to save it for a rainy day when it might really be needed for something important. It had certainly been helpful to have her own money when it came to tough years on the farm and there’d been other expenses: Kate’s ongoing treatment after she’d fallen from a tree; Bree’s extra study trips; Laura’s braces. Natalie’s off-farm income had helped with many things over the years.

She studied Milt as he rummaged for clean clothes. Her strong, unfaltering Milt, although she doubted that again now. Not his strength but the unfaltering part. She’d swallowed her pride and her hurt all those years ago, forgiven him, moved on with their lives but now she questioned her trust. Did she really have the confidence in him that she showed to the rest of the world?