How is it you tell people things without words? In looks, or the lack of them. In waiting behind when school finishes, or not. Tethering your horse as far as possible from where he parks his motorbike. Hurrying off after church as fast as you can in your too-tight shoes.

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After Fred left for Sydney it was just Jack and me to help Dad with the milking, and the work was such we could never catch up to it, it was always just beyond our grasp. Dad had a crease between his eyes as deep as a furrow in soil. I wanted to smooth that crease, to take some of the worry and ease the work which woke him hours before the sun rose, long before the milking was due to begin.

One night I was woken by a distant neighing and went outside to check, thinking perhaps a fox was trying to break into the chook shed or bothering a new calf. I walked across the grass in my nightdress and bare feet. The pale moon made the trees glow silver and the corrugated iron of the shed roof ripple with light. Dad was standing beside the shed in shadow, smoking, and I jumped when he stepped towards me.

‘What’re you doing?’ His voice was hoarse and cracked.

‘I heard the horses and came to check. Remember that fox last year who dug under the chicken coop?’

Dad nodded, crushing his cigarette into the dirt. ‘It’s just me they’re whickering at. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d get a fence mended rather than lie in bed awake.’

‘I’ll help.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll need your strength for milking come morning. Go back to bed ’fore your mum sees you’re gone and starts to fret.’

I stood there a moment longer looking up at the whole moon, the stars dim beside its light, feeling as safe as I ever would with my father there beside me, before turning back towards the house.

Later I learned that he had reason not to sleep, for Ellis’s father had told him the cream from our dairy was too unreliable, our cows didn’t yield enough, our equipment was too old. It turned out Jack and I alone were not sufficient. It would cost my father too much to hire labour, to buy milking machines, and there were debts already: the separator which was never paid off, the bills from the vet, the grocer in Milton. So he decided to sell. He announced it at dinner one night.

‘We’re moving to Sydney. We’ll stay with Mum’s sister in Glebe until we find our feet.’