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shelf, trying to look busy. It’s easier to bury things when you don’t have to talk about them with anyone.
    ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘let’s get some breakfast.’
    After I’ve grabbed a couple of cans of beans, I walk back out into the light. Rose follows, but she’s looking over her shoulder into the shed like she can’t believe what she’s seen. I lock up, put the branches back and hide the key.
    Back in the kitchen I get started on cooking. I remember I have two eggs in the fridge. There are chooks that have gone wild and a while ago I found their nest.
    ‘Eggs,’ she says with excitement in her voice again.
    She takes one of them from my hand and sits it in the flat of her palm, still with a look of disbelief on her face at what I’ve shown her.
    I light a match and the stove hisses to life. Before I can put the pan on it, Rose comes over and holds her hands above the flame.
    I cook up the eggs and the beans, frying them until they’rejust right. When I turn around, Rose has set the table with knives and forks laid out and a glass of water at each place.
    ‘I just had to do that,’ she says.
    ‘No worries,’ I say.
    ‘Nowrriz,’ she says, deep and low, and I realise that’s what I sound like to her.
    We eat in not-quite silence. I remember how she ate the rabbit last night and that she probably spewed most of that up on the garden. She finishes hers before I’m even halfway through mine, wipes her mouth with the back of her good hand then picks up the plate and licks it clean. She burps loudly.
    ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Beth never allowed us to do that.’
    I try to muster a burp of my own but fail miserably.
    She laughs, her eyes softening for a few seconds, but then her face grows serious.
    ‘What do we do now, Finn?’
    ‘Well, first I have to go and check my traps. I set them yesterday morning. I don’t want to leave them any longer.’
    ‘Traps?’
    ‘For rabbits. That’s what you ate last night. Most of it’s on the garden now I reckon.’
    She smiles.
    As I get ready to go out, I have a churning feeling in my gut. I hardly know this girl and I’m leaving her with everything I have. The house, my food, the stores. Everything. But I can’t see any way around it right now. She’s seen it all already andshe could probably find her way back here if she needed to. Or lead someone else back.
    Before I leave I bring out the bow and arrows from my room.
    ‘You know how to use these?’ I ask, handing them to her.
    ‘Kinda. Aim and shoot, yeah?’
    ‘Close enough. I’ll be a couple of hours. I’ll give you a whistle like this when I get back,’ I say, making a noise like a wattle-bird, ‘Don’t come out unless you hear it.’
    I’m extra cautious today, taking the long way around behind the golf club to get to the ridge. Rowdy sticks close. At the top of the ridge I stop and scan the town below, but there’s no sign of movement, nothing to put my nerves more on edge.
    I’ve laid the traps along the old fence line that marks the start of the farmland. Today’s a good day. I get three. I stretch their necks quickly and tie some twine around their back legs. Then I reset the traps.
    As I’m heading back down into the cover of the bush, something catches my eye; something glinting in the sun across the paddock in an old hayshed.
    I duck down and watch, thinking it’s just a tin or a bit of glass catching the light. Then it moves.
    I place my hand over Rowdy’s muzzle. He knows what this means and drops his belly to the ground. I’m too low down to make out what it is so I crawl along to a low-slung stringybark and shimmy up into the branches. I’m holding my breath, but I can feel my heart pounding against the bark of the tree.
    There are at least half-a-dozen men sitting around a fire. Uphigher, I catch the smell of meat cooking. I’m not sure they’re the Wilders that chased us yesterday until I see the trailbike catching the morning sun. There are blankets strewn across the hay