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big hand-drawn map of the farm and carefully drew a symbol for each tree she had planted that day. In Mae’s narrow hallway, the policeman had unfolded his map of the harbour, his voice quiet as he moved his finger across the crazy curves of the foreshore. ‘This is where we are looking. And this is where the people on the ferry saw her.’ He spoke to her as if she was familiar with this Mae who lived in a dingy house, who had erotic books beside her bed and a wardrobe full of silky dresses. He spoke as if she knew Tom, in his sharply creased dark suit, leaning against the counter in the kitchen, his impatience with the police obvious. She was thankful that Tom didn’t try to make eye contact. She was afraid he would see her thinking about Mae’s phone call, hearing over and over again her sister’s voice leaking from the handset into the dark farmhouse.
    That first night in the city, she had lain awake in Mae’s bed. There was too much noise, too many people, too close. She got up and sat on the chair by the open window, counting the lights being extinguished one by one in the dark buildings, marvelling at the lives of strangers unfolding so close to each other. Sitting there, waiting for the dawn, she knew that her mother had been right, she would never have survived in the city, after all. She had never imagined it so hard, so overwhelmingly treeless. She wondered if Mae had ever sat in that same chair and thought of Julia doing time on the farm, shovelling shit, heaving the cows in and out of the stalls and creeping past her father’s door. Did Mae ever think about Julia growing older up in the valley, passing out of her teens, into her twenties, a farm wife before her time, a farm wife with no husband? Perhaps some people were simply destined to stay in the valley and some were meant to get away. Saul left, but he told her that for weeks before his father wrote to ask him to come home and help, he had dreamt of the valley every night, of flying slowly above the forest, then swooping down over the lush paddocks and the cows gathering at the dairy.
    At the first glow of sun in the sky, the streetlights sputtered out and the tiny morning birds began flitting from rooftop to rooftop, their chirping thin and weak. Through the buildings, Julia could just see the harbour and how much darker and denser it was than the ocean or the river back home. The policeman had talked to her about the harbour currents and the way the water could sweep unpredictably from cove to cove.
    Once the sun had risen and filled the attic bedroom, she knelt on the floor in front of Mae’s wardrobe and swept her face back and forth across the dresses, then buried her face deep into the slippery silky fabric. She pressed it hard against her eyes and waited for the day to begin.

chapter three
    Allie woke to Julia’s voice loud on the phone in the hallway of the farmhouse, ‘Okay. Okay. Don’t worry, we’ll get her across. Yep.’
    She swung her legs to the edge of the bed, her heart hammering. It could be Mae on the phone, standing in a phone box on a wide empty street in some beach town, propping the door open with one leg, coins ready to drop in. And as she waited for Allie to come to the phone, she would be looking down to fishing boats leaving with the tide, like they saw in that town Tom took them to.
    Julia turned on the hallway light and came to Allie’s bedroom door wrapped in a sheet. She whispered, ‘Are you awake?’
    ‘Who was that on the phone?’
    ‘A neighbour. I’m going down to the third crossing. The creek’s up and I have to re-string the old flying fox. Do you want to come?’
    The floor was gritty and damp under Allie’s feet as she stepped into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and followed her aunt out into the misty dawn air.
    Julia drove slowly down the muddy driveway, steering the tyres either side of deep ruts. ‘Marion—who lives up the valley—her baby’s coming and there are problems. We need to get her