Baby At Bushman's Creek. Jessica Hart

and her blush deepened.

      ‘Of course not,’ she said almost sharply. ‘I could have made up my own bed, though.’

      Gray ignored that. ‘Like I said, I wasn’t sure what to do about Alice. She’s too small to sleep in a bed, isn’t she?’

      ‘I put her in a drawer last night.’ Clare was glad of the change of subject. ‘One from that chest of drawers will do fine until we can find her a cot.’

      In fact, by the time Alice had been fed and bathed, she was ready to sleep anywhere, and she let Clare tuck her up in the drawer without protest. Clare pottered around the room until she was sure Alice was asleep, and then went in search of Gray.

      She found him on the verandah with a shy, lanky youth introduced as Ben. Ben, it appeared, had offered to listen out for Alice while Gray took Clare over to the cookhouse for a meal.

      ‘If you’re going to do the cooking, we’ll all eat in the homestead tomorrow,’ said Gray as they walked over to the long, low building set a little way from the house.

      Darkness had fallen with disconcerting speed while Clare had been putting Alice to bed, and she felt rather disorientated to find herself suddenly walking through the night. It was very dark, and the air was shrill with the whirring, clicking sound of invisible insects. They sounded alien to Clare, used to a background noise of traffic and sirens and voices in the street, of music played too loud in the house next door and the ticking sound of waiting taxis and the subdued roar of the planes coming in to land at Heathrow.

      She imagined the eerie, empty outback stretching out all around them, and she shivered slightly, glad of Gray’s tall, solid, immensely reassuring presence beside her. Clare was furious to find herself thinking that it would be even more reassuring if she could slip her hand into his and feel his long fingers close securely around it, and, terrified that one might steal over of its own accord, she hugged her arms together.

      ‘How many will I be cooking for?’ she asked, hoping that her voice didn’t sound as high and tight to Gray as it did to her.

      ‘At the moment we’ve got two ringers—they’re the more experienced stockmen—and four jackaroos,’ he told her. ‘Then, tonight, there are two truck drivers. They’re taking the sale cattle out first thing tomorrow morning so they can get to the sealed road before it gets too hot. We get government inspectors occasionally, roo shooters, contractors who come in to do specific jobs…you think a place like this is isolated, but you’d be surprised how many people pass through.’

      Clare had been calculating on her fingers. ‘You mean I’ll be catering for at least eight every night?’ she said, taken aback.