Meredith’s stomach dipped as the ground dropped away beneath them. Had Lucy felt like this? she wondered. As if her heart were being torn out of her as the plane lifted into that immense sky?

Hal banked over the homestead and, as they turned, Meredith saw the corrugated iron roof flash in the sunlight. There was one last glimpse of the grey-green trees along the creek and then were they climbing, turning and climbing up into the blue. She craned her neck, suddenly desperate not to lose sight of it, but the homestead was already receding, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the vast, featureless brown landscape and was gone.

They flew in silence. There was nothing to say. There was too much to say. You’re being sensible, Meredith kept telling herself. It’s the sensible thing to do. Just say goodbye and go.

Hal landed the plane at Whyman’s Creek’s tiny airport and taxied over to where several small planes like his were parked in a row. When he cut the engine and the propeller died, the silence was overwhelming.

Hal took a deep breath. ‘Meredith-’ he began, but she interrupted him.

‘Wait!’ she begged him. ‘You don’t need to say anything, Hal. In a moment, I’m going to get out and take my case and say goodbye. I’m going to get on the Darwin plane and I’m going to go home, and I’m not going to look back because we both know it’s the right thing to do.’

She drew an unsteady breath and made herself go on. ‘But…but I want you to know that the last few weeks have been the best of my life, and whatever happens there will always be a bit of me that still loves you the way I do now.’

Hal had turned in his seat to look at her and now he cupped her face between big, gentle palms. ‘I love you too,’ he said, very simply, because in the end, what else was there to say? They kissed, not a deep, passionate kiss, but one that was warm, tender, and heartbreakingly sweet, and Meredith’s eyes were starry with tears when their lips parted at last.

‘I won’t ever forget you, Meredith,’ Hal told her. ‘I just wish…’

‘That we weren’t the people we are?’ she finished for him as his voice trailed off hopelessly. Losing the battle with a tear that spilled over her lashes, she wiped it away with a hurried finger.

He nodded. ‘I wish we could do something about it, but we can’t.’

‘No.’ Meredith took a deep, steadying breath. ‘No, we can’t.’

She gathered up her laptop. ‘I think I’d better go, Hal. Don’t come with me. I don’t think I can bear it. Let’s say goodbye here.’

So he simply lifted her case out of the plane and pulled up the handle so that she could trundle it along behind her. Meredith hoisted her laptop on to her shoulder and hesitated, holding her sunglasses in her hand.

‘Actually,’ she said, her voice high and cracked with strain, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to say goodbye.’

‘Then we won’t say it,’ said Hal. His chest was so tight he could hardly breathe. ‘Travel safely, Meredith. Be happy.’

She looked at him for one last moment, her vision swimming with unshed tears, and then she put on her sunglasses, took hold of her case blindly and walked away across the tarmac to the hut that passed as a terminal at Whyman’s Creek.

Hal stood in the shade of the little plane and watched her disappear inside. A few minutes later the Darwin plane landed. It disgorged two passengers, and four more came out from the terminal and walked up the steps. Meredith’s walk was so familiar to him by now that he could have spotted her even in a crowd.

He saw her hesitate at the bottom of the steps and glance his way, and he raised a hand to her. She lifted hers back and then went on up the steps and into the plane.

Come back! Hal wanted to shout.

He wanted to run over and pull her out, down the steps, back to Wirrindago, but the door was closing, the steps were being pushed back out of the way and the plane was taxiing to the end of the runway. It paused there for a moment and then launched itself forward, trundling faster and faster until, with a great heave, it lifted itself into the sky.

His heart like a stone in his chest, Hal watched it climb higher and higher into the glare until it was no more than a speck, and then even that vanished. Only then did he get back into the plane and fly home to Wirrindago.

Meredith tried. She really tried. She spent the long journey back to London telling herself that as soon as she got home, Hal and Wirrindago would be like a dream. It had only been a few weeks. How could it be more than a dream? It hadn’t been real. It had just been a time out of time, when she had played at being someone else for a while.

The trouble was that it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt all too real, and London was the place that seemed strange and unreal. The first morning that Meredith woke on her own to the subdued rumble of traffic rather than squabbling cockatoos, the longing for Hal and Wirrindago hit her with the force of a blow and she curled up in bed, hugging herself against the pain, biting hard on her lip to stop herself from crying.

She was hoping against hope that when she saw Richard all the old feelings would come flooding back and that her feelings for Hal would prove to be just a temporary obsession, a passing physical attraction, but sadly it didn’t work that way. She was delighted to see him sitting up and talking, and felt real affection as she leant down to kiss him on the cheek, but love…no. She knew what love felt like now.

And, in spite of Lucy’s certainty, Meredith was sure Richard felt the same. He greeted her like a good friend, and told her with much good-humoured rolling of the eyes how embarrassed he was that his parents had sent her off on wild goose chase, but she noticed that his eyes followed a rather pretty nurse who seemed to be finding all sorts of excuses to come into his room.

‘So it looks like it was all for nothing,’ Meredith confessed dully to Lucy later. ‘I’m sorry. I should have left you alone in Australia.’

But then she wouldn’t have known Hal. She would never have seen Wirrindago.

Lucy was bitterly disappointed when she discovered that Richard had resisted the opportunity to sweep Meredith into his arms and declare undying love.

‘I was so sure that he was in love with you,’ she said, sounding almost aggrieved. ‘Once he’d confessed that he wasn’t in love with me any more, he spent his whole time telling me how great you were, how easy you were to talk to, and how he hoped you’d come back soon.’

Meredith shook her head. ‘Richard has only ever thought of me as a friend,’ she said. ‘He’s never looked at me the way he used to look at you, or the way he looks at that blonde nurse.’

‘Oh, her.’ Lucy sniffed disapprovingly. ‘She’s always hanging around. I’m sure it’s very unprofessional.’

‘Maybe, but Richard looks quite happy about it.’ Meredith smiled at her sister. ‘To be honest, Lucy, I don’t think he wants either of us!’

Lucy’s face crumpled. ‘I’m so sorry, Meredith. I’ve spoilt everything for you all over again! I should never have raised your hopes like that. I should have waited and found out exactly what the situation was instead of rushing in and getting it all wrong, the way I always do.’

She looked anxiously at Meredith. ‘Are you very unhappy? You seem so sad.’

‘I’m not unhappy about Richard, I promise you,’ Meredith tried to reassure her. ‘I’m just…’

Missing Hal. Wanting Hal. Needing Hal.

‘…just tired,’ she finished feebly. ‘I’m still a bit jet lagged.’

‘It takes a few days.’ Lucy brightened, convinced at least that Meredith wasn’t bitter about Richard. ‘You must have been glad to get back to your nice house, though. You’ve been away for weeks.’

‘Yes, it was time I came home,’ Meredith agreed.

Only it didn’t feel like home any more. Her cosy, comfortable house felt claustrophobic now. It was just a place without Hal.

She found a smile. ‘Anyway, Hal said you could have your job back whenever you want.’

Lucy hesitated. ‘I’m not going back, Meredith,’ she said at last, and Meredith stared at her.

‘But…I thought you loved it there! You told me you were in love with Kevin.’

‘I know I did. I thought I was.’ Lucy sighed. ‘But…I think my feelings for him were just mixed up with how much I enjoyed being in Australia. I know the outback isn’t your kind of place, but I found it all so romantic.’

It is my kind of place, Meredith wanted to shout at her. It is.

‘But once I left,’ Lucy went on, unaware of her sister’s mental interruption, ‘I started to think. Could I really spend my life somewhere like that? You know what an extrovert I’ve always been. Who would be my friends? I still think Kevin is incredibly attractive, but what would we have talked about after a while? The outback is all he knows, it’s part of his charm, but I came to realise that I was being unrealistic.’

She glanced ruefully at her sister. ‘I’m sure that’s no news to you! You knew that all along, didn’t you? You said you were sorry for coming out and making me leave Australia, but I’m glad that you did, Meredith. Otherwise I could have made a big mistake.

‘It was me that made all the running with Kevin,’ she said, ‘and I could probably have swept him along into marriage, but what would he have done with a wife like me? I might not have been able to stick it out, and then I would have hurt him, and that would have been terrible. As it is, I bet he didn’t really miss me that much, did he?’

‘He seemed just the same,’ Meredith had to admit.

Lucy’s words resonated in her heart. I could have made a big mistake…What would he have done with a wife like me?…I might not have been able to stick it out…I would have hurt him… They could all apply to her, Meredith knew. She should be thinking like Lucy. Lucy thought that she would understand, and she did, but only with her head, not with her heart.