‘Don’t even think about doing anything wet,’ he told it. ‘House-training starts now.’

The woman was walking the sheep down the slope toward the track. He backed up as close as he could.

‘Mess my seat and you’re chops,’ he told the lamb in a further refinement of house-training. He closed the door firmly on one captive and went to collect another.

Getting the ewe into the truck was no easy task. The ewe took solid exception to being manhandled, but the woman seemed to have done this many times before. She pushed, they both heaved, and the creature was in. The door slammed, and Fergus headed for the driver’s door in relief.

The woman was already clambering into the passenger seat, lifting the lamb over onto her knee. Wherever they were going, it seemed she was going, too.

‘I can drop them at Bentley’s,’ he told her. ‘That’s where I’m going.’

‘You’re going to Bentley’s?’

‘That’s the plan.’ He hesitated. ‘But I’m a bit lost.’

‘Go back the way you came,’ she said, snapping her seat belt closed under the lamb. ‘I can walk home from there. It’s close. Take the second turn to the left after the ridge.’

‘That’s the second time I’ve been given that direction,’ he told her. ‘Only I’m facing the opposite way.’

‘You came from the O’Donell track to get to Oscar’s?’

‘I’m not a local,’ he said, exasperated.

‘You’re the local doctor.’

I’m here as a locum. I’ve been here since Thursday and I’ll be here for twelve weeks.’

She stared and he thought he could see calculations happening behind her eyes.

‘That might be long enough,’ she whispered, and he thought she was talking to the lamb. She was hugging it close-two muddy waifs.

He wasn’t exactly pristine himself.

Whatever she was thinking, though, she didn’t expand on it. They drove for a couple of minutes in silence and he realised he didn’t even know her name