‘I hope you like lamb,’ Ellen says. ‘I’ve got a leg in the oven for dinner.’ And that’s the smell again, of Mum’s roast lamb on a Sunday, and my hunger is deeper than I knew possible.

Sometimes there aren’t words, once a story is told, for what it means. There aren’t words for this—because you’re there, you’re here, and as much as you love both you don’t fit in to either place. Because of the love of both. In spite of it.

I excuse myself to lie down, and in the dim bedroom a fly buzzes again and again into the window above my head. I open it. I miss Jim more intensely than I have missed him in years—here, of all places. I fall asleep thinking of the way he looked in the nursing home when he was dying of the cancer, the way the bones of his face stuck out from his skin but his eyes still laughed even when his voice couldn’t. I never brought him home. Our plans for a cruise fell apart like our lives when he was diagnosed only a few months after suggesting it. He died before I had the chance to show him where I was from. Is it too late now?

•

I wake not knowing where on earth I am.

They take me to see the milkers, the sheds of equipment, the glistening industrial machines. Jack leads me proudly past cows that are little more to him than the numbers tagged in their ears. I realise, running my hand across the rump of one, watching her jump and quiver, that they no longer know human touch. We talk vaccinations and disease. It’s a healthy herd, but they are used to cold metal, the hum and pinch, the whirring machine. I smile and nod for Jack’s sake, for Hannah’s, telling him how fine it is, how much sense it makes. But I walk from the shed through the paddock back to the house thinking of the naked udders in my hands, the sound of milk hitting a tin bucket, the sweet frothy smell of grass and hay.

Hannah skips up beside me. ‘You should try again, Grandma. Milking by hand. Should I ask?’

‘No, love. It’s enough to remember.’

I think, then, how much I’ve forgotten. How bloody hard it all was, how tired we would be by the end of the day. Every single day. No break, not even for Christmas. The past seems prettier than it was. I ought to tell Hannah. I’ve given her the wrong impression.

•