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Sometimes the gas oven looks pretty good . I told her not to talk rot. Her father ruined her, traipsing her around the world at fourteen when she should have been in school. More like a wife than a daughter. Only thinking of himself, that’s what I said. And you know what she said?’
    Mum shakes her head again.
    â€˜ A ruined woman, that’s me . I said you will be if you don’t do the right thing by Jack, he’s a good man and a good husband, and you won’t do better than a banker. He could’ve gone to Tokyo, did you know that? She could’ve gone too. Now she ups and leaves. Well, there’ll be no welcome mat for her at Bindilla. Marriage is for life and that’s that. And what’s she come back here for? That’s what I want to know.’
    Mum still doesn’t know. But I do. ‘Aunt Cele loves Burley Point.’
    They stare at me with owl eyes. ‘She’s not your aunt,’ says Grannie, ‘she’s your third cousin, twice removed, which makes her nothing to you.’ She puts down her cup with a clatter and pushes back her chair. ‘And she’s nothing to me either.’

4
    Other times I’ve looked under his mattress, in the jar with his marbles, but never in the boxes on the shelves next to his bed. They are labelled in Dunc’s curly writing. Red Wattle Bird. White Browed Scrub Wren. Rufus Bristlebird , which Dunc calls Hopping Dolly Bird because sometimes they fly so close to the ground that they look like little dolls hopping along. Would he hide his ring under an egg? I lift a lid. Inside are five eggs on a nest of cotton wool, marbled blue and pink, spotted black and white. Grey Shrike Thrush. Butcher Bird. Red Brow Firetail Finch. No skull ring. I lift more lids. Singing Honeyeater. Silvereye. Tawny Frogmouth. Rufus Bristlebird. Still no ring.
    A shadow at the window of Dad’s room! I jump back with guilty speed and press against the wall, harder, flatter. Mum making up his bed? Or has Dunc come home from Pardie’s?
    Dad! He should be pulling pots? I flatten smaller, my head a spin. Then the door opens and he walks right in. ‘Whaddya up to?’
    â€˜Looking.’
    Taking the box from my hands, he sits on Dunc’s bed. Common Coot. Hooded Plover . Superb Blue Wren. He lifts out a willy-wagtail egg.
    â€˜One of the few that build two nests a year. Ever seen one?’ I shake my head. ‘Here.’ He pats the bed next to him. I don’t move. He looks up and beckons with his head. I sit beside him carefully, warily. He smells of Brylcreem and whiskers and the soapy scent of his shaving brush beside the basin.
    â€˜They’re this big.’ He shapes his thumb and forefinger into a small circle. He smells of something secret like a bird’s nest might smell of if you sniffed inside when the bird had left. ‘Made out of grass and cobwebs and hair. When they’re building their nests you see them cleaning the cobwebs off rafters and gutters and flying back with full beaks. Good-looking nests they build too, smooth and strong, you’d think they were made of cement.’ He returns the egg to the nest and examines another. ‘When I was a kid, I saw them build a nest inside a dog kennel. You know why they did that?’
    â€˜They liked dogs?’
    He laughs, more like a snuffle. ‘Maybe. Could be. Mostly it’s because they’re not stupid, they know they’re safe near a dog. Safe from rats and cats and foxes. And dogs don’t seem to mind birds chirping above their heads. Whaddya think about that?’
    I think he holds that egg gently as if it might break. I think he has fingernails bitten like Lizzie’s. I think he might like Willy Wagtails better than me and my head is a muddle and the cat’s got my tongue.
    â€˜Once I saw them build a nest in a shed at Bindilla where a pair of Sparrowhawks were camped. Hawks are mouse-eaters and the Willies knew they were