I looked after Ella while Hannah was at work in Mackinley, and when Ella was at school I read or took long walks around the bay. In the evenings we had a meal on the verandah, and when Ella went to bed, Hannah and I chatted about her work—she was investigating a rare bank robbery that had occurred in the capital last week—and looked ahead to the holiday.Ella wanted to know all about Tamara Falls. “Will there be an animal farm?” she asked one day on the way back from school.“I’m sure there’ll be animals near the villa,” I temporised.“And will Hawk and Kee tell me all about the places they’ve been to in their spaceship?”I laughed. “Hawk’d like nothing better.”I gripped her small hand as we walked along the foreshore. Ella had been a late and unexpected bonus to a life I had thought complete: after two years of trying for a child, we’d resigned ourselves to having only each other—and although that was fine by me, I was troubled by the fact that Hannah wanted a child.
