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they act unreasonably, and sooner or later they’ll respond and treat you the same. There: simple, really. Olivia listened to other kids complaining about their parents and how insane they were, how they’d completely lost it over this or that, and asked silently, Why do you bother? I don’t get it. But there were so many things she didn’t get about other kids. Probably never will , she thought glumly. She was just hanging in till she got to be an adult herself and could do what she wanted. Get a license to keep reptiles, for instance. And goats, she’d love to have goats one day. Those fantastic eyes, and their hard, nubbly little heads.
    She ran through her pets’ care schedule in her mind. There had been some disruption. It was her last year in primary school, and Deborah had decided that it might after all be a good thing for her to go to a private secondary school, given the appalling mess that bunch of crooks left the state education system in , in which case Olivia should try for a scholarship. So there had been a lot of extra study, and her care schedule had got a bit behind. But nor had she been able to make this Saturday morning trip to her grandfather’s for a few weeks, and she missed it. She’d been gardening with Grandpa forever; since she was a baby sitting in her stroller watching him work, listening as he told her every single thing he was doing, and why. She knew Grandpa missed her visits, too. And the animals were all fine, really. She’d got extra pellets in before things got too busy; the latest litters of rabbit and rat babies had all just gone to the usual pet shops, and she wouldbring home a load of leafy greens from Grandpa’s today. Tomorrow she would dust the hens for parasites. Next month, the dogs’ vaccinations, and she’d get the vet to look at Fly-by’s broken tooth. Yes.
    ‘All good, girls,’ she told the dogs, and Mintie turned her clever black-and-white face up to her for a moment and nodded. Or the dog equivalent. Fly-by, tearing about in true kelpie fashion, covering a hundred metres for every ten Olivia walked, was too busy to make a response.
    Alex was in the kitchen when she came through the back door. He started a little. ‘Gosh, Olivia, I thought you were your mother for a second! The spitting image of her, you are now. Cuppa?’
    ‘No thanks, Grandpa. These were out by the roses,’ she said, putting the secateurs and gardening gloves on the table as he came over to kiss her hello.
    ‘Thank you, sweetheart. I just thought I’d check the roses for pruning,’ and indeed, as he said this Olivia was reading the very same words in the little notebook lying there beside the teapot.
    ‘But we pruned them in July,’ she said.
    ‘Of course we did.’
    ‘Is it time to give them a spring feed?’
    ‘Not just yet. Thought we’d tackle the vegie garden today.’
    ‘Excellent! My chooks really need some fresh greens. So do the bunnies.’
    ‘Wish I still had some chooks, Ollie. I really miss those girls.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘Rotten foxes.’
    ‘Rotten foxes,’ Olivia agreed, picking up the phone to let her parents know she had arrived. It went straight to message, so she left one.
    ‘Let’s get stuck into it then, shall we?’ said Alex. ‘Gloves?’ And like two surgeons eager for the blade, they turned with the same motion, pulling on the gloves as they strode purposefully out the back door and into the green spring morning.

CHAPTER 2
    Angus was asleep on the couch, the Saturday papers adrift all around him, when the phone rang. He managed to lurch across and answer it before it went to message, although the sudden movement made his left quad twang threateningly. Lucky I gave up footy when I did , he thought.
    ‘Angus Hume,’ he said thickly, rubbing the sore spot in his thigh.
    ‘Dad, it’s me. Grandpa’s having a rest and I wondered if you might be able to pick me up.’
    ‘Uh? Uh-huh.’
    ‘If you’re not busy. Because I’ve got these big bags of