The horse again leaned into me and pushed gently. I pressed my face against her muscular throat, closed my eyes and rested my arms around her neck and felt the sun warming both of us until Hessel said, ‘So Elizabeth wrote to you, huh?’

I stepped back from the horse. The letter was still there in my coat pocket, inside the house. ‘Um, yes,’ I said.

Hessel nodded. ‘Interesting.’ He stroked a gnarled hand down Polly’s side. ‘So you have come for holiday,’ he said. ‘But do you not have school?’

‘School holidays actually.’

‘But holidays – there is not much to do here, Anna. We are too boring for you. We are not as young as we were. We stay home. Elizabeth doesn’t drive anymore, she forgets too much – that is what happens when you get old: first you forget names, then you forget faces, and then you forget to put on pants, huh?’ He laughed at himself. ‘It is all a terrible business. But me, I am okay, so far.’ He laid his hand over his heart. ‘I joke, but I am still young here. But I am afraid I am too busy with my Polly to drive you around.’

‘Well, as I said, I don’t know if I’ll be staying. I might have to go –’

‘Your grandmother would very much like you to stay. You wouldn’t leave her so soon. It is wonderful you have come and you help your grandmother. You have cleaned some already – I see this. She gets tired now, she is old with no family to help her, and I feel concerned for her. She is a beautiful flower, but I see her wilt with fatigue.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. Hessel laid his hand on Europa Pearl’s neck and said, ‘Come, come, my darling. We’ll brush you down and get your blanket on again, eh?’ He drew gently on the broodmare’s lead, and then turned back to me. ‘Anna? You would like to come?’

I paused. I would. I would have very much liked to go and spend time with him grooming this weighty creature, stroking her ample body, looking into her eyes, marvelling at her. I moved my hand down her flank and across her abdomen, over the baby horse hiding in there.

‘No, thank you,’ I said, suddenly drawing my hand back to myself. ‘I think I really do need to go and do some study.’

‘Ah, if you think it is useful then I suppose you must,’ Hessel said, and he drew the broodmare away across the paddock and back towards the shed, smiling to himself as he went.

17 January 1996

That day

After breakfast Cathy waited by the side of the road for Leonie and Danny to come by in the ute with Leonie’s cousins – Arch and Kaz and probably Gary – to pick her up. Then they’d swing by town to pick up Becky, and head out to the res.