She had waited three days for him to come home, and during those days she had never worried. If you haven’t done anything wrong, she reasoned, why should you have anything to fear? On the fourth day she got the Telegram.

On the fifth day she went to Martin Place to leave a bouquet at his last-known place of breathing, but the Brave Digger there moved her on. Poppies only, he told her, and she looked down at the cluster of pink-grey proteas—he’d always loved proteas, like plump galahs he said—clutching them silently amid the sea of red. She wept, and the Brave Digger wept with her: for the bravery of those boys, he comforted her; for their sacrifice, for our freedom.