The lamb is delicious, so much like Mum’s used to be, and there are so many voices over dinner. Laughter, stories. They can’t get enough of Hannah. My glass of wine keeps being refilled and my face is hot, the room is too hot. I stand and say I need some fresh air, go outside for a moment. Inside they are all still at the table, and I watch them in the light, their voices muffled by glass. Watching it all is mesmerising, until I see my own reflection, shadowed against the light. An old woman looks back at me, bent by the years. For so long the past has called to me. I have watched it from the outside looking in, so bright sometimes it hurts my eyes. I turn away from the doors, from the voice of my father, the radio, the lamb sliced paper thin.

The air is cool and the sky is huge, the frogs at the dam chirrup and there is the hum of the generator. Above me are hundreds of stars; I can pick out the Southern Cross among them. The wind brings the sharpness of wood smoke, eucalyptus leaves, the tea trees that line the banks of the creek. Something rustles in the leaf litter beneath the pepper tree.

Hannah steps outside to join me. She clasps my arm.

‘You okay, Grandma?’

I don’t know. I can’t say.

‘It must be strange to be back.’

I nod.

‘Will we go back in? They’re waiting for you, to serve dessert.’

I let her lead me, one hand gripping mine, the other gentle on my back. Inside there is the warmth of the fire, the golden light on my brother’s face. To see him is to see how old we are. I sit among them, at the head of the table, where they have placed me. I lean towards their faces, and watch the young ones clear the plates, their eyes sparkling with their secret jokes, their faces full of unlived life. I try to recall what it is I wanted to say, what I have come back for.

I remember the book of photographs, and Hannah fetches it for me from my suitcase. I show them Jim and me at our wedding, at my graduation from vet school, at his retirement party. Blurry snaps from family vacations. Andy and Caroline, Hannah as a little girl. They pass the book around and echo each other’s words. How lovely. How handsome.

‘Better lookin’ than that first Yank you got hitched to,’ Fred says in his laconic drawl.

The room is silent for a second before exploding into laughter. His wife gives him a smack on the arm.

It’s not too late.

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 40