EXHAUSTION took care of the first part of the night. It almost always did. But despite the wonderful meal, the fabulous bed and the feeling of being nurtured, the demons were never far away. Tori woke as she’d done for the past six months, at three in the morning, to stare wide-eyed into the dark. Remembering a darkness she’d never forget.

Rusty had gone to sleep on her bed. Now, however, he was where he always was at this time of the morning, with his nose hard against the door, waiting for someone to come home.

‘It’s time we both stopped waiting for them,’ she told him, but he whimpered and pawed the door and she rose to let him out, to show him that no one was on the other side of the door.

Rusty had been one of a pack. Maybe she should get a new pup, she thought. Maybe that’d help. Somewhere, sometime, she’d read that a measure of a life well lived was how many good dogs could be fitted in. As a vet and dog lover since childhood, she accepted that for a fundamental truth. But still… To take that last step and move on…

She wasn’t ready and she wasn’t sure Rusty was either.

She walked out onto the verandah and gazed up at the mountains looming above. The moon was vast and full, turning the night into a sepia version of daylight, with the blackened landscape softened, disguised.

Rusty nosed her ankle and whimpered.

‘We shouldn’t be off the ridge,’ she whispered, stooping to hug him. ‘It feels wrong.’

It wasn’t wrong. She had to start her new life. Tomorrow?

But maybe she’d come down too quickly. Right now it felt as if she’d forgotten something very important.

‘Maybe we need to say goodbye,’ she whispered. ‘Come on, Rusty, we can do this. Do this and move on.’

She slipped back into her room and tugged on jeans and windcheater, then headed out again, her little dog at her heels. She didn’t go out through the house, though. She didn’t want to wake the household, so she slipped out onto the verandah, down through the rose garden, around the corner of the house to the car park-and she barrelled straight into Jake coming in the opposite direction.