Adelaide lay fully dressed on her bed, looking up at the pressed tin ceiling. Apart from the occasional bark from a dog, answered by other dogs in the valley, the town drowsed in the last hours of Christmas Day. A change had blown through in the evening and she had the window wide open to let the cool air into the house, the curtains riffling with the breeze. It brought with it the heavy promise of rain.

She rose and went to the kitchen to fetch some water. Through the window she could see the faint glow of a lit pipe outside Mick’s shed. Adelaide was not the only one still awake.

She opened the back door and stood for a moment, on the point of returning to her bed.

‘Come and join me, Miss Adelaide.’ Caleb’s voice came from the dark and, without thinking, she crossed the yard to where he sat on the bench, his back against the shed’s rough boards, his legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. ‘Forgive me for not rising.’

Adelaide stood looking down at him. ‘Can’t sleep?’

‘My leg is aching, and I am rather enjoying the cool air.’

‘What were you thinking about?’

He drew on his pipe and removed it from his mouth. ‘Now, why is it that you ladies always want to know what a man is thinking? I can tell you that it is never as interesting as you hope it will be.’

Adelaide laughed and joined him on the bench. They sat without speaking, looking at the clear sky, the stars so close she thought she could reach out and touch one.

‘Since you’re curious, I was thinking the constellations are so different here,’ Caleb said. He used the stem of his pipe to point to the Southern Cross rising above the dark hills. ‘I never thought I would see the cross. It’s beautiful.’ He tapped the spent tobacco out on the bench beside him and sighed. ‘My father would take me out on clear nights to look at the stars.’

‘It sounds as if you were close to your father.’ Adelaide wondered if he could detect the note of envy in her voice. She doubted her father ever thought about stars or anything beyond his own concerns.

‘He was a good man, but I’m afraid I was a disappointment to him.’

‘In what way?’

Caleb hesitated. ‘I chose a different path to the one he wanted for me. He did not approve of the war and still less of me joining the army, for whatever cause. He saw it as a betrayal of his beliefs.’

‘His abolitionist beliefs?’

Caleb shook his head. ‘Everything he stood for. He was a Quaker.’

Adelaide glanced at him but in the dark she could only see his profile: a long straight nose and finely chiselled cheekbones. ‘And you’re not?’