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Fleur blinked. She hadn’t expected such a remark, imagining the woman pining for the snobbish sitting rooms of the capital. ‘Is your family local, Eva?’

The woman nodded, smiling. ‘I have four sisters here, and my mother came here as the schoolteacher before the Great War. She was very elegant, and the locals nicknamed her “the lady”. I think most found her formidable, but that was because Mum was very proper and she liked to have afternoon tea with a silver service and a starched tablecloth.’ Eva looked around. ‘Not like here, with my three boys growing up around me,’ she said but with affection. ‘People said that when my mother invited you to tea, it was like being invited by the Queen Mother.’

Fleur laughed but hid her amusement that mother and daughter didn’t seem so far apart in their habits. The Napier Bells lived well, which she noted, and Eva continued.

‘I’ve done all right with my Jack. I think I’m a privileged soul in Farina. I bathe daily in a fresh bucket of water.’ At Fleur’s soft frown, she qualified her remark. ‘Water’s very expensive, and firewood here is triple the price you’d pay in Adelaide.’

Bruce burst back into the room.

‘Manners, young man,’ his mother remarked.

‘Sorry. Er, Miss Appleby, yes, the gang left yesterday.’

Fleur had never fully grasped the meaning of the phrase of a sinking heart but she did now. It felt like hers had dropped several inches, and she had the sensation of being at the tallest point of a playground swing’s arc and then falling backwards in that inevitable downward sweep. But unlike the fun of a children’s playground, she felt momentarily nauseated, almost dizzy with what she heard.

‘Is Alf sure, Brucie?’ John pressed his brother.

The lad nodded. ‘He said he delivered the longnecks onto the wagon. Plenty of them, he told me. And Tom Catchlove was at the reins. Tom told Alf he’d see him in six months or so.’

The walls of the Bell’s house seemed to collapse inward, mimicking Fleur’s mind, which seemed to invert on itself. ‘Gone,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve missed him?’

John looked around awkwardly at his family and then took a step to crouch by where Fleur was sat. ‘Look, Fleur, um . . . I’m sure he’ll make contact.’

‘He doesn’t know I’m coming, John. He doesn’t think I want him. He doesn’t know yet that I’m having his baby.’

Fleur heard Eva Bell gasp, noting the slight hitch of indignation.

‘They were to be married,’ John snapped at his mother, but his attention was back on Fleur. ‘I’m so sorry. We can try and get word to them but not tonight, I doubt.’

‘Well, there’s nothing for it, Fleur,’ Eva said. ‘You shall have to stay here this evening. I can’t have a young woman from the city walking off into the night in your condition. Did you have nowhere planned for your overnight?’ She had suddenly become haughty.

‘No,’ Fleur bleated, feeling uncharacteristically helpless. In her mind Tom would have learned she was here and come running, kicking up the dust behind him as he leapt off the wagon, with the famous Bonny he’d told her about bravely pulling him all the way to Farina as she had all those years ago when his mother had been in labour. But that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

She allowed herself to be ushered to a spare room that Eva Bell and Frieda hurriedly made up. She heard them telling her about the outhouse and other such mundane information but none of it sunk in because reality was forcing its way through all the detail and her sorrows were crowding in.

Bonny was surely dead and Tom was no longer here. So why was she? She had no immediate future that held wedding bells and lots of smiles. Her love had disappeared. Her mother dead, her father dead . . . an orphan again. She had not had the chance to explain the terrible lie. How could Irma have known? Fleur herself had barely realised what was happening in her body until she had encountered the doctor signing a death certificate as she arrived to help the bereaved family.

They’d both stepped into the hallway while the family said their final farewells.

‘You’re looking a little peaky to me, Fleur. Are you well?’ Dr Parsons asked.

‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks. It’s just, you know, these last few months have been taxing.’

‘No doubt, no doubt,’ he said softly. ‘Even so, Fleur, you look wan. You should come and see me.’

‘I’m fine, truly.’

He persisted. ‘No symptoms of anything?’

She sighed, realising he was not going to let it go. ‘I seem to be very tired suddenly, lacking the energy I have always been able to count on.’ She shook her head with a wan smile. ‘Just unused to my body not obeying. It will pass. As I say, it’s been a rough few months, and I suppose this is the result of a lot of suppressed worry and, well, grief.’

‘Hmm. Do you take much sugar?’

She hadn’t expected that. ‘No, not really. My father never did and so I tended to copy him. I don’t have a very sweet tooth – no real cravings, although, funnily enough’ — she chuckled softly — ‘just recently, all I want is ice-cream . . . and I seem to want the smell of coal.’

He snapped her a fresh glance. ‘You crave them?’

She shrugged. ‘Silly, I know. But if I do treat myself to an ice-cream, all I do is sicken.’