So when a big car pulled up in the yard, Meredith was delighted at the distraction. A visitor was just what she needed.

A woman about her own age climbed down from the car and stretched. She smiled when she saw Meredith appear on the veranda. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Lydia. I’ve come to take Emma and Mickey home.’

‘We weren’t expecting you back for a while,’ Meredith admitted as they went into the homestead. ‘Hal expected to have them for a couple of months.’

‘I know, that’s what we planned but…well, when Greg and I got there, we realised how much we missed the kids and wished that we had them with us. We decided that we’d made a mistake. We did need time alone together, but we needed to be a family together more, so I’ve come back to collect Emma and Mickey and Greg is cutting short his trip and is going to fly back to Sydney as soon as he can.’

Emma and Mickey had been out with Hal to check the salt licks and were delighted to see their mother when they all came in together, but were typically now reluctant to leave. Since the day at the water hole, they had been spending more time with their uncle and had now quite forgotten how bored and homesick they had been at first.

‘Do we have to?’ they asked when Lydia told them they were going home, probably exactly as they had said it when she had told them about going to Wirrindago. ‘Can’t we stay a bit longer?’

‘Only a couple of days,’ warned Lydia. ‘We’ve got to return the car to Townsville, and then we’re going back to Sydney. Dad’s flying back early so we can all be together.’

Meredith was envious of their closeness as a family. Although the children moaned, they obviously loved their mother and were excited at the thought of seeing their father again. She liked Lydia, who was more open than Hal and obviously loved Wirrindago while being realistic about the fact that she could never live there again.

‘Greg’s a businessman,’ she said, ‘and we have a good life in Sydney, but I will have to try and bring the kids back here more often. They’ve obviously loved it.’

Lydia helped Meredith to get lunch the next day. ‘I wish Hal would have kids,’ she said, washing the lettuce she had brought with her as a treat from Townsville. ‘It would be so good for him to have a family of his own.’

She glanced under her lashes at Meredith, who was annoyed to find herself flushing. ‘I gathered he didn’t want to get married,’ she said carefully.

‘Oh, that’s what he says, but it’s nonsense,’ said Lydia, dismissive as only a sister could be. ‘He needs a wife.’

‘I guess it’s not that easy to find someone suitable out here,’ said Meredith, trying to sound non-committal. ‘There aren’t that many opportunities to meet people.’

‘There’s you,’ Lydia pointed out slyly.

‘There’s nothing between me and Hal,’ Meredith said, firmly cutting the bread.

‘Isn’t there? I’ve seen the way you look at each other, especially when you think the other one isn’t looking. I don’t quite know what it is, but it certainly isn’t nothing!’

‘No, honestly,’ she insisted. ‘I’m just standing in for my sister. Didn’t Hal tell you? I don’t belong here.’

‘Funny,’ said Lydia, ‘you seem to me to belong perfectly.’

Meredith looked up from the loaf, astounded. ‘Me? But I’m a city girl!’

‘Really?’ Lydia smiled as if humouring her. ‘You seem to have adapted very well then.’

And it was true, Meredith thought. She was getting used to the outback in a way she would never have dreamed possible when she’d first arrived. It was ridiculous to say that she belonged, but, yes, she was learning to appreciate the stillness and the silence and the dazzling light.

Just in time to go back to the greyness and the dampness and the crowds of London.

Meredith returned to cutting the bread. ‘I’m leaving soon,’ she told Lydia. ‘Just as soon as my sister comes back.’

‘Shame,’ said Lydia lightly. ‘Well, I’ll just have to find someone else for Hal. He’s been on his own too long.’ She started slicing tomatoes. ‘The trouble is that he’s never got over the way our mother left.’

‘He told me,’ said Meredith and Lydia looked at her in surprise. ‘Did he? He doesn’t normally talk about it. Did he tell you about Jack too?’

Meredith nodded and Lydia’s gaze rested on her thoughtfully.

‘It was worse for Hal,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I don’t remember much about that time, but Hal was older. He remembers everything, and I think he feels responsible, as if he should have somehow known what Jack was going to do. Dad was broken up and it was Hal who had to hold everything together until our aunt arrived.’

‘It must have been hard for him,’ said Meredith. ‘For all of you.’

Lydia shrugged practically. ‘We did all right. And you have to move on. It’s such a pity Hal’s engagement to Jill didn’t work out. It made him think that no woman would ever stick it at Wirrindago, and that if he did get married, history would repeat itself, but lots of people have very happy marriages out here, and you can have unhappy marriages in a city. It’s nothing to do with the place.’

‘Still, you’d have to love somebody a lot to be prepared to live somewhere like Wirrindago all the time,’ said Meredith.

‘Yes,’ said Lydia, looking at her seriously. ‘You would.’

Meredith was sad to see them go the next day. ‘It’s going to be quiet without you,’ she told Emma and Mickey as she hugged them goodbye.

‘I wish we could stay,’ said Emma, clinging to her.

‘Now, don’t start that again,’ said Lydia briskly. ‘You know you’re looking forward to getting home and seeing Dad and it’s not as if it’s goodbye for ever. We’ll come out and see Uncle Hal again next year.’

‘And you,’ said Emma loyally to Meredith, who found that her throat was suddenly tight.

‘No, I won’t be here,’ she said, but she couldn’t imagine not being there. She couldn’t imagine being back in her London house, with no galahs screeching in the trees, no fierce blue sky, no red earth.

No Hal.

But she couldn’t imagine staying here for ever either. She would go nuts with boredom. OK, she hadn’t had time to be bored yet, but if she was here all the time…of course she would get bored.

Wouldn’t she?

Not that there was any question of staying for ever. Even if Lucy hadn’t been coming back, Hal had made it clear that any relationship would be a strictly temporary one, so getting involved would be pointless.

Wouldn’t it?

Completely pointless, Meredith told herself, but she was very aware of Hal standing next to her as they waved off Lydia and the children. When the car had disappeared and the dust had settled, they still hadn’t moved. They weren’t even looking at each other, but the air around them was so taut that Meredith had to suck in extra oxygen. Funny to be standing out here with hundreds of miles of space around them and to feel that there wasn’t enough air to breathe.

‘Well,’ she said, as the silence threatened to smother them.

‘Well,’ said Hal.

He turned and looked at her for a moment. Her hair had grown out into a softer style since she’d arrived. It was curling now around her face, the sun picking up gold at its tips, and she had a hand to her forehead to shade her face. She was wearing the old shirt that he had given her for cooking, and she looked warm and alluring and somehow right standing there beside him.

I won’t be here, she had told Emma.

Hal tried to imagine how it would be when she had gone, when he wouldn’t be able to walk inside and find her in the kitchen, or hard at work in the study, or quiet and still on the veranda at night, but his mind shied away from the image of emptiness and loneliness.

Which was ridiculous. He’d never been lonely before, and he certainly wasn’t about to start now.

‘We’ll be back for lunch,’ he said gruffly and strode off.

Meredith watched him go and felt the familiar roil of desire in her entrails before she made herself go back inside. And be sensible.

But, no matter how hard she concentrated on all the reasons why it would be stupid-more than stupid, ridiculous-to get involved, Meredith couldn’t stop her heart crashing into her throat when she heard Hal’s boots on the wooden steps at lunch time. All the men came in for lunch, but she was only aware of him. She felt as if her whole body was charged with electricity, and kept waiting for him to stare at her and ask her why she was buzzing and humming.

He wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t Richard. He wasn’t perfect. But she wanted to touch him more than she could ever remember wanting anything before. She wanted to be able to go round to the end of the table, to put her arms around him from behind and bend down to kiss the side of his neck. She wanted to run her hands over his back, under his shirt, to whisper that she didn’t care if they both had work to do and that it was the middle of the day, she just wanted him to take her to bed…

Meredith swallowed hard and wondered if she was actually running a fever. That would account for the heat that kept washing through her, the light-headedness, the churning in her stomach, the way her bones had turned to liquid. She needed to lie down.

Or she needed to sort herself out.

Think of it as a fever, she told herself. It just needs to work its way through your system. And you can help it on its way. All you have to do is tell Hal that you’ve changed your mind.

The more Meredith thought about it, the more she thought that was exactly what she needed to do. Why was she even hesitating? She was twenty-eight, for heaven’s sake, and she had never had a passionate physical affair. At this rate, she was never going to have any kind of affair, and she would dwindle into a sensible, practical middle age knowing that she had never been wild or reckless or simply taken what had been offered.