I ran my hand up over the cotton of his pyjama top, feeling the hardness of the buttons, the stiff piping at the seams. I put my hand beneath it to feel his skin, thinking of the flank of a cow, the calming touch. His stomach was soft and vulnerable. Somehow these months home, this injury, had made him a child again, a boy in a man’s body. I brushed my hand down over his pants and felt his arousal there. The waistband of his pyjama bottoms was tightly knotted. I fumbled for a moment, then released the cord, slipping my hand down. Near the side of his hip, beside the curved bone, I felt the raised shiny ridge of his scar, the place where the bullet had entered and been cut out of him, where the bone had splintered and sort of healed.

‘It’s disgusting,’ he said.

‘Not at all. Feel how smooth this new skin is.’

I took his hand in mine and put it there, where the skin had grown back shiny. I moved my hand towards the centre of him, hearing his breathing grow harsh. This was what could bring us together again. He lifted his knees to tug his pants down to his ankles. I lay on top of him, feeling the twitch of him pressing into me through the fabric of my nightdress. He made a sound, a kind of low cry, and I put my mouth on his, kissing him, thinking of the rush of air when you step out onto the platform between the cars of a moving train.

‘Remember,’ I whispered, ‘in Sydney, before you left.’

He swallowed hard and his throat constricted. In the lamplight I saw the hollow in his cheek as he clenched his jaw. It came so quickly then, for he shoved me against the wall and was on top of me before I knew what had happened, his one hand pulling up my nightdress, the other between my legs, then him pushing inside me.

He jerked and heaved, thumping my head against the headboard, his elbows pressing down either side of me, his face with a pained look. It hurt, for it had been a long time, and I had meant for us to take it slowly.

‘I missed you,’ he rasped, as he collapsed on top of me.

‘I missed you too,’ I said, but my words were smothered by him.

•

What we had was different there. I woke each morning to the smell of ham frying, high brown biscuits, coffee starting to boil in the pot. Wishing for the familiar creak and call of a currawong. The trees were winter-bare, the fields bleak and brown, and nobody spoke to me but to tell me what chores needed doing. Roy slept or toiled in the fields. At dinner one night his father told me: ‘It takes thirteen months a year to grow good tobacco.’