It’s a kind of local arrangement. A farmer eight miles up the road from here runs it. He goes down to the Forks three times a week and links up with the government mail car that you caught. Tommy Johns, the manager, usually drove her down to the front gate to catch it. She used to ring up his cottage when she was ready to start. When he didn’t hear from her, he says, he thought one of us had taken her. That’s what he says,” Fabian repeated. “He thought one of us had taken her and didn’t bother. We, of course, never doubted that she had been driven down by him. It was all very neat when you come to think of it. Nobody worried about Flossie. We imagined her happily popping in and out of secret sessions and bobbing up and down at the Speaker. She’d told Arthur she had something to say in open debate. He tuned in to the House of Representatives and appeared to be disappointed when he didn’t hear his wife taking her usual energetic part in the interjections of ‘What about yourself?’ and ‘Sit down’ which are so characteristic of the parry and riposte of our parliamentary debates. Flossie, we decided, must be holding her fire. On the day she was supposed to have left here the communal wool lorry arrived and collected our bales. I watched them load up.”

A shower of pebbles spattered on the windscreen as they lurched through the dry bed of a creek. Fabian dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his heel. The knuckles of his hands showed white as he changed his grip on the wheel. He spoke more slowly and with less affectation.

“I watched the lorry go down the drive. It’s a long stretch. Then I saw it turn into this road and lurch through this race. There was more water in the race then. It fanned up and shone in the sunlight. Look. You can see the wool-shed now. A long building with an iron roof. The house is out of sight, behind the trees. Can you see the shearing shed?”

“Yes. How far away is it?”

“About four miles. Everything looks uncannily close in this air. We’ll pull up if you don’t mind, I’d rather like to get this finished before we arrive.”