“I believe I do,” said Dunstan with great courtesy. “I’ve heard a great deal about you and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you and learning more.”

“More than you want, maybe,” she said. “But it’s not me we’re here to talk about, it’s you. Dunstan Woollass, this is your fucking life!”

They sat around the kitchen table.

Dunstan was at its head. On the right with her back to the window was Frek. Opposite her was Mig Madero.

Sam sat at the bottom end, facing Dunstan. Behind him she could see Mrs. Collipepper making coffee. It was hotter here than out in the autumn sunshine.

All this was down to Dunstan.

In response to Sam’s aggressive flippancy he had said, “My life? Excellent. But that may take some little time and the atmosphere in here is a touch crepuscular and rather too chilly for my old bones. So why don’t we descend to the kitchen, which the Aga always maintains at a nice temperature? The kitchen is the heart of a well-run household, don’t you agree, Sam? May I call you Sam? How are you enjoying your visit to our little backwater? How do you like our valley? Do you feel any connection with it? I should be interested to know.”

By God, he was a cool customer, thought Mig. Set the tone, keep it well mannered and English, put a proper distance between yourself and this strident little colonial! He waited with interest and some concern to see how Sam would reply.

“I feel like I’ve stepped through a north-facing door and met the devil,” she said quietly.

It took Mig’s breath away. It even disconcerted the old man for a moment.

Then he smiled and said, “Ah yes. You’ve done the church tour, I see. Or has Frek been treating you to those old legends she values so much? But, as I always say to her, it’s all a matter of approach. It’s possible to step through a north-facing door and find yourself facing south. Let’s go down, shall we? Frek, my dear, your arm, if I may.”

Downstairs in the hall, Mig had offered to leave.

The old man said, “No, no. I have Frek to support me, and it would be unfair if Sam didn’t have a near and dear friend by her side.”

Once at the kitchen table, Sam sat in silence, waiting to see if the housekeeper was to be included in the permitted audience. Mrs. Collipepper set the coffee down in front of Frek, said, “I’ll see to your fire, Mr. Dunny. It’ll need banking,” then left.

Sam, recalling Mig’s laughing reference to the old goat’s midday “nap,” wondered if this was some kind of code.

“Now, my dear,” said Dunstan to Sam. “The floor is yours.”

Keep it simple, thought Sam. And keep it cool and controlled.

“I’ve been talking to Pete Swinebank,” she said. “He tells me that in January 1961 he was present on Mecklin Moor when your son, Gerald, raped my grandmother, Pamela Galley, who was eleven at the time. I believe that not long after this happened your son confessed to you what he’d done.”

Mig could hardly believe what he was hearing, hardly begin to take in its implications. It was less than two hours since he and Sam had parted. Where had this devastating information come from? More importantly, what had it done to her and where was it leading? He looked at her with love and concern. She didn’t even glance at him. Her gaze was fixed on the old man, challenging him to deny it.

Frek continued pouring coffee as if nothing remarkable had been said.

Dunstan nodded vigorously, like an old tutor confirming the accuracy of a point well made in a seminar.

“Yes, that’s right, he did. But I was not the first to hear the sad tale. He told it first to his confessor, who urged him to make a clean breast to me. I reproved him, I punished him, and I removed him from Illthwaite lest his continued presence should cause the injured child more pain. But I knew my responsibilities did not end there. I took advice. Finally, feeling a deep obligation to take care of the poor girl’s long-term welfare, I made what seemed then the best possible arrangements to guarantee her future.”

He sat back with the look of a man who’d fought his corner for virtue in an unresponsive world and Sam felt her vow of control under early threat.

“Her future?” she echoed. “Yeah, you guaranteed that all right. All miserable eight months of it which she spent in pain and terror a world away from home among a bunch of insensitive and psychopathically cruel strangers.”

Her voice spiraled upward but she managed to hold it down beneath those near-ultrasonic levels it could reach at times of untrammeled emotion.

He leaned toward her a little, his face expressing concern, his eyes warm with compassion and sincerity.

“My dear, I do not doubt the truth of what you say for one moment,” he assured her. “What I have learned since – what we have all learned since – demonstrates how wrong we were, all of us at this end of the process, in our estimate that any short-term pain would be more than compensated by the long-term benefits. If anyone here knew the truth of what was going to happen to so many of these children when they reached your shores, do you think we would have permitted it to happen? I certainly had no idea. As to the fact that the child was pregnant, you must believe I was utterly ignorant here. She was carrying my grandchild, for God’s sake! Do you think I would have permitted my own blood to be born twelve thousand miles away and left in the care of strangers?”

The old bastard’s doing indignation! thought Sam. How the hell is it happening that I’m sitting here all calm and this slippery sod’s getting indignant?

To hell with control! Now’s the time to start screaming!

But before she could begin, Mig spoke in a mild but measured tone. He found he was looking at Dunstan Woollass from a new and unflattering angle. Removing historic documents to protect your family name was a venial sin, harming no one. But protecting your family name at the expense of an innocent child was very different.

He said, “I think we may accept that you didn’t know the girl was pregnant, Mr. Woollass, but that’s hardly the point. Surely if you were as concerned for her future as you claim, you would have made arrangements for regular reports on her welfare to reach you. Even if not detailed, I don’t see how they could have avoided mentioning the fact that the girl died in childbirth within a very few months of arrival in Australia.”

The response came not from Dunstan but from Frek.

She said, “All my grandfather would require was a general affirmation that all was proceeding according to plan. If at some point, early or late, someone saw fit to dilute the truth, then that’s hardly my grandfather’s fault, is it?”

“You mean, not mention the baby’s birth and the mother’s death?” said Mig incredulously. “That’s not dilution of the truth, that’s criminal misrepresentation!”

Sam had had enough. She wasn’t here as a spectator in some debating chamber.

“Shut up, both of you!” she yelled. “You’re here to listen, not to join in.”

“Quite right, my dear. This is between you and me,” said Dunstan, glaring reprovingly at his granddaughter.

Oh, but he’s good! thought Mig, observing the ease with which the old man lined himself up with Sam. What must he have been like in his prime!

For a moment Sam looked a touch disconcerted to find herself allied with Dunstan, but she had a directness to match his dexterity.

“Anyway, all this crap about who told who what is irrelevant. As soon as Pam Galley’s boat sailed, that was it for you, wasn’t it? End of story. Happy-ever-after or dead-in-a-ditch, didn’t matter. You just didn’t want to know. You’d got things tidied up here. The Gowders must have been easy once you’d spelled it out in words of one syllable. Big trouble if they blabbed, an easy ride if they kept quiet. As for Pete Swinebank, you probably worked out he’d be too scared to talk to his dad. You didn’t foresee that what they’d done would eat away inside him till finally he spilled it all out to the curate. But even that fell right for you when the poor sod took himself off the board. And there you were when Pete got the news, a sympathetic authority figure telling him what he wanted to hear, that the best thing he could do now was keep his mouth shut.”