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before that, and the way the wild blacks walk over the cliff near the lighthouse, with nothing but their shirts to hide themselves, laughing at us when we try to hide our eyes and shoo them away.’ My face was heating up. ‘They should be rounded up like the rest of them and sent down to Lake Myner, where they can learn to be good and decent Christians. Who knows when we might wake up to find that it’s more than carrots they’ve taken? What’s to stop them doing what they’ve done to some of those families further inland? You’ve heard the stories, Albert – you know as well as I what those men are capable of, what a well-thrown spear can do.’
    Let him argue with that.
    â€˜They’re just stories, Kate. No one’s getting speared round here ’less they deserve it, that’s what I reckon.’ He smiled wryly.
    And that was all it seemed I was going to get out of Albert.
    â€˜Looks alright,’ he added, and started back for the track.
    I was fuming and too proud to follow behind so I stomped around the garden for a few minutes more, sensing that I had been laughed at twice this morning, and not liking the feeling at all.

SEVEN
    I MUST HAVE BEEN FOURTEEN WHEN M RS J ACKSON , WHO was pregnant once again, lost a baby. Late one evening Albert came banging on our door.
    â€˜It’s the baby – it’s coming!’ I heard him panting to Mother as she pulled on her housecoat.
    â€˜Kate,’ she called back to me, ‘gather some towels and bring them to the Jacksons. Get Mrs Walker on the way.’ She hurried out after Albert.
    I remembered the births of my brothers and sister, but only in the half-light of a child’s memory. I remembered sleeping in Harriet’s bed, and Mrs Walker making us porridge in the morning, and going back to our cottage to find Mother in bed with a bundle of blankets at her breast. But until this night, I had never been privy to what happened between the swollen bumps under my mother’s dresses and the squashy pink babies that came after.
    Mrs Walker and Harriet were already at the door of the Jacksons’ cottage when I rushed up. We could hear a muffled wailing coming from inside and let ourselves in. Mr Jackson had made himself scarce, but I could hear Albert reading to Harry and Lucy and little Edward in the front room as we hurried past.
    â€˜Doesn’t it sound awful?’ Harriet whispered.
    â€˜Ungodly,’ I said.
    Mother let us venture as far as the half-closed door of Mrs Jackson’s room before she sent us back to the kitchen to get some water on the boil. I caught a glimpse of strewn bedclothes and the shocking sight of Mrs Jackson’s hair come all undone and falling about her shoulders and across her face. Then Mother pulled shut the door.
    Harriet and I made the trip between the bedroom and the kitchen so many times that night I lost count. I went outside and filled the pail from the tank and put the kettle on the stove and tidied away the plates and the cups. No doubt Mrs Jackson would find them in the wrong place when she returned to her kitchen and would click her tongue at the fact that I was so inept in matters of the hearth. That’s what you get when you let a girl run wild, I could almost hear her say.
    I tidied and fussed until the screaming reached fever pitch, and then could do nothing but draw a wooden chair next to Harriet’s at the table and clutch her hands. The screaming became a rhythmic grunt that sounded like a wild pig, nothing human about it. Harriet and I stared at each other, our eyes wide. I’m certain that Mother and Mrs Walker had forgotten they had left us there in the kitchen, for otherwise they would surely have shooed us away.
    Mother’s voice carried down the hall, anxiety clear in its cadence. ‘Come now, Mary – you’re nearly there. One last push.’
    This babe would be born very soon, I was sure of it. If I went up the