And I hung up, hurrying back to my typewriter and working through the rest of lunch, in case anyone had seen me making a personal call. I thought of Fred and his long legs, his skinny calves in school shorts, his knobbly knees. To think a bullet had entered his flesh, shattered the bone, to think of his uniform torn and bloody. I wanted to nurse him myself, to put a cool hand on his cheek and have him here, captive, safe from danger.

Dot dropped by later that afternoon. We went to the tea cart together and stood by the window in a quiet part of the corridor, blowing on our scalding tea so we could drink it quickly and get back to work. I told her about Fred being injured and Roy coming to lunch.

‘What’ll you say?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If he asks you to marry him—what will you say?’

‘Don’t be daft. He’s not going to ask.’

‘He’s shipping out, isn’t he? I’m just trying to prepare you. Have you still got the dress on layby?’

I nodded. I’d kept up the payments. It was foolish to let some other girl take it, what with everything I’d already put in.

‘Would you marry a Yank?’ Dot asked.

‘What’s the difference?’ I replied. ‘Marriage is marriage, isn’t it?’

Dot looked at me as though she couldn’t believe she was friends with someone so dumb. Of course it was different, of course it meant something else, but here’s the truth of it: I was so caught up in what it would mean for us to be together, really together, before he left for New Guinea that I shut my eyes to what might happen beyond it. I pushed down any thought of what might come after.

•

Roy picked me up from Mrs Mulligan’s at half past eleven on Sunday morning, waiting downstairs in the lounge room as though he hadn’t lain just last week half-naked on my bedroom floor. I could see the comb marks in his hair, the place where the razor had nicked his Adam’s apple. He wore his uniform, neatly pressed, his shoes shining like the wet, black stones I used to gather from the creek at the farm. He bent down to kiss my cheek and smelled of vetiver and clove, and I grasped his forearm so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if my fingers left marks. We walked to the street and hailed a cab—Roy was always catching cabs—and he stopped to buy flowers for my mum. He showed me a shopping bag filled with boxes of chocolate and cigarettes.

‘You shouldn’t spoil them,’ I said, and he rested his hand on my knee.

‘Where I come from you never show up empty-handed.’