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Tom could barely find the right words. They came nevertheless, arriving into the awkward pause and not bridging the gap smoothly. ‘They’ve kept him, then?’

‘Yep,’ Stu said, averting his gaze, and tears arriving. ‘In the morgue, boss.’

Tom blinked. He couldn’t have heard right.

The blokes around him gave soft gasps. One whistled a sound of disgust.

Tom stared so hard at Stu it was as if his gaze had the power to lift the lad’s chin and demand he look at him. ‘Sparra’s dead?’

Stu swallowed and knuckled away his tears. He nodded. ‘The nurses said it was the kindest thing anyway. Nothing they could do. His spine was broken, they reckoned, and even if they had been able to get him to Adelaide, there was little to be done to fix it. He’d have had no life, the senior lady said.’

That was more words in one breath than he’d heard Stu say in any given week. He looked traumatised and his mate, Wilko, shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

Tom walked up and squeezed Stu’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. He wished now he had taken the lad himself and not let these youngsters bear the brunt of the rouseabout’s death. ‘You did your best and I’m grateful – we all are – that you got him to hospital. Join the boys . . . have a drink and have a meal. You’ll feel better, Stu.’ What else could he say? He looked at the other station hand he didn’t know well. ‘Thanks, Wilko, for being there.’

The lad tried to say something but clearly couldn’t find any words and Tom understood.

‘I’m taking the truck. I’ll go pay my respects to Peter.’

He couldn’t wait to leave the line-up of shocked, unhappy expressions but he drove towards Farina as slowly as he dared. He was in no hurry to look upon Sparra’s broken corpse.

Mother, sister, father . . . Peter. Death seemed to be Tom’s regular companion.

6

PORT ADELAIDE

April 1935

Henry Appleby shook his head and flapped the page with disgust, reaching for his glass of ale nearby. It would become a glass of brandy later, Fleur thought with sadness as she sat quietly between her parents at the dinner table. Except they weren’t really her parents. Only one parent sat at the head, vexed at some item of news in his evening newspaper. The other – an impostor, as far as Fleur was concerned – sat with pinched lips where her real mother once sat.

Irma was Fleur’s stepmother, but even that term was loose, in Fleur’s opinion. She thought of her more as a conniving limpet of a woman, who had clung fiercely to Henry from the moment he had looked at her and used his grief at being widowed to steal Mae Appleby’s role for herself. To Fleur it had been a sly and orchestrated campaign to win her father’s affections; the horrible woman who now sat in Mae’s chair had shown such patience that Fleur almost believed that beneath Irma’s skin lived a reptilian creature of ancient cunning. She had tried over and again to find qualities to admire, just one thing to like about Irma – perhaps the affection between her and Fleur’s father – but she had come up wanting. She had never seen a fondness coming from her father, nothing even resembling love.

Now, as an adult, Fleur believed the marriage had been one of convenience on both sides. It suited Irma’s social climbing aspirations as much as her need for security. And what her father got out of this arrangement, Fleur had often worried over, and she had finally settled on him simply wanting a wife to run a household and the child within. It appalled her that he’d relegated her mother’s role to something so practical, given how loving they had been towards each other.

These days her father made no pretence of his indifference towards Irma and had taken to reading the evening newspaper at the dining table, something Fleur knew her darling mother would never have tolerated. What’s more, her father would never have put up such a barrier between himself and his women had Mae still been living. Her early death from influenza had changed all their lives in so many ways, reading at the dinner table one of the least intrusive. The worst was making Henry so vulnerable to a predator such as Irma.

‘You can clear the dishes, Nan,’ Irma said with her fake smile, dabbing at those mean lips that seemed to be permanently chapped. ‘Coffee for Mr Appleby.’

‘I don’t think—’ Henry began.

‘Nonsense, dear.’

Fleur would have gladly helped but she knew it would raise her stepmother’s ire. She continued to find new pretensions to focus her attention on. The last few years had been about jewellery and acquiring more of it to show her husband’s wealth. Right now, though, Irma was fixated on the notion of domestic help, and how that spoke of wealth and position.

The household currently had a staff of two. Nan was a sailor’s wife with a clutch of children and a need for income, and had entered their lives just a few weeks prior as a cook and server. Fleur didn’t believe she was particularly competent at either but she was cheap and looked the part in her new uniform. A cleaner, Jean, had been keeping the house dusted and tidied for half a year now.

Fleur thought about her lovely mother, who had happily run the household alone, raising a child among those duties, but was now eighteen years in her grave. Her father had held out for a couple of years; it was hardly a happy life without Mae, but they’d managed well enough as father and daughter, despite the hole she left because of the deep affection between them. And yet somehow Irma had got beneath his skin and, likely during a drunken moment, coerced him to get married.

So here they sat. The world’s unhappiest trio around a table where the happiest of families had once eaten. Fleur shook her mind free of the past. It did her no good.

‘What is happening in the world to make you cross, Dad?’ She knew he still enjoyed a conversation about news and events with her. Irma would only join in if it was salacious, involved some sort of purchase or, best of all, offered an opportunity to make money. He didn’t look well; he was pale but it would only vex him to mention it.

‘Not cross. Concerned. This beef riot they’re talking about is going from bad to worse. We’ll be busy if they keep this up, because people from the port are going to get hurt or even die with all this hostile feeling flying about.’

Fleur sensed Irma’s interest was piqued at the mention of bodies and burials.

‘Nothing is bad that’s good for business, Henry,’ Irma predictably said, as though making some grand philosophical point. ‘Er, Nan, we’ll take coffee in the drawing room now,’ she said in the lofty voice she reserved for servants or her father’s funeral workers.