‘Mr Bentley needs help with his breathing,’ Fergus said, trying not to sound like he was talking through gritted teeth. He knew by now that the diagnosis she’d made had been spot on. ‘He’s not safe to leave alone. The ambulance will have to come out to collect him.’

‘I told you-they won’t come for at least a couple of hours.’

‘Will you stay with Mr Bentley until they come?’ he asked, without much hope, and she shook her head.

‘Nope. I’m needed elsewhere and I can’t stand Mr Bentley.’

‘I can’t stand you either, miss,’ the farmer snapped. ‘You and your whore of a mother. You and your family deserved everything you got.’

Ginny had opened the screen door and stepped inside, but Oscar’s words stopped her. She flinched, recoiling as if she had been struck. Her colour faded and she leaned back against the kitchen bench as if she suddenly needed support.

‘No family ever deserved what happened to us,’ she whispered, and she turned to Fergus as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the man on the floor. She swallowed, evidently trying hard to move on from his vicious words. ‘Obese patients like him are the pits,’ she said, ‘and if you leave him alone he’ll stay alive just long enough to sue. More’s the pity. So you need to take him to hospital. If neither of us want to sit here for a couple of hours, that means we use the back of your truck. I got the ewe out.’

‘You got the ewe out,’ he said blankly, and she managed a weak smile.

‘That would be the sheep, city boy. The one that was…well, making herself at home in the back of your Land Cruiser. I put the ewe and her baby in the home paddock.’ She glared down at Oscar with disdain. ‘I put hay in there, too, and I filled the trough,’ she said. ‘Much to the relief of the rest of the stock. You’re so off our property. I’d rather let the place go to ruin than let you agist on our place again. The dogs are starving. The sheep are fly-blown and miserable, and there’s a horse locked up…’ She broke off and Fergus saw real distress on her face. ‘I’ll get the RSPCA out here straight away,’ she whispered, ‘and I hope you end up in jail. You deserve to be there. Not hospital.’