She was flinching for the next impact, but it didn’t come.

‘Get, get, get!’

She rolled again, deeper into shadow, and dared to look out. The creature was staring in at her, hitting the ground with its hoof, gathering momentum for another rush. But Pierce was beside it, silhouetted against the moon, swinging something that looked like a rifle.

Shoot it, she thought, but she was too dazed to think more.

‘Move, move, move!’ Pierce’s yells could have woken the dead. He was powering into the creature’s path, putting himself between Shanni and everything else, lashing out like his rifle was a scythe.

The creature swung to face him.

‘Get, get, get!’ Pierce was giving it no time to think. He was right in its face, swinging his weapon, smashing forward. He was yelling, hitting, pushing…

The creature backed. Backed some more.

Pierce was following it, right on top of it, giving it no quarter.

Back. Back out of the garden. Back…

The creature turned, confused, beaten, lumbering towards the gate. And as it did Shanni saw…a dangly bit underneath.

As if she’d needed confirmation.

It was through the gate now. The great wooden gate swung closed with a crash. The rifle was tossed aside.

‘Donald, are you okay? Donald…’ Pierce was striding through the garden, hauling himself up on the veranda, tugging Donald into his arms. ‘What the hell…?’

‘Shanni,’ Donald quavered.

‘Are you okay?’ She could see their shapes on the veranda, huddled together.

‘Yes.’ It was a whisper. ‘It hit Shanni. She’s down there.’

‘Shanni?’ He put Donald away at arm’s length. ‘Where?’

‘It was trying to hit her. I…I think it did.’

‘Stay there, mate. Don’t move.’ He was jumping down from the veranda, crashing through the undergrowth, searching in the direction the bull had been aiming for. ‘Shanni. Shanni, where are you? Shanni…’ His voice cracked in desperation.

She had to speak. ‘I’m here,’ she managed, but she had to try again because her voice didn’t quite work. ‘H…here.’

Then, as he swore and swore again, as he dived beneath the undergrowth, as he knelt beside her and swore even more, as he put his hand on her shoulder and felt the warm stickiness of blood and stopped swearing-stopped even breathing-she asked the question she most wanted to know.

‘Why don’t you use test tubes?’

They were all in the kitchen. Everyone. Wendy was sitting in the rocker by the fire, cradling Bessy. Donald was standing about as close to Wendy as he could get. Abby was at Donald’s feet, hugging his legs. Bryce had decreed everyone needed cocoa and was making it. Very slowly. His hands were shaking.

Shanni was doing a lot of shaking herself.

Pierce had ripped her windcheater even more than the bull had. He’d exposed a long, shallow graze that ran from her underarm almost to her throat. He had a bowl of soapy water and he was washing it and swearing under his breath.

‘Not in front of the children,’ she whispered.

‘I locked that gate,’ he muttered, towelling her shoulder with care. ‘It was padlocked. I’m not a fool. The chain’s been cut.’

‘Clever bull.’

‘The bull’s sausages,’ he told her. Then he shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know what’s going on, but Clyde’s normally even sookier than the cows he services. There’s things going on I don’t understand.’ He was inspecting her wound, his face grim. ‘I don’t think this needs stitching, but maybe we need to get you checked out.’

‘You’re thinking of leaving the kids while we go to the nearest hospital?’

‘If we need to…’

‘We don’t need.’

‘But-’

‘Just put a bandage on it,’ she said. ‘Bandages will make me better.’ She looked down into Abby’s huge eyes. ‘Don’t bandages make things better?’

‘And jelly beans,’ Abby said. ‘There’s bandages in the bathroom.’ She hugged Donald’s legs a bit more and then rose stoutly to her feet, almost offering herself as personal sacrifice. ‘I’ll get them. But I don’t know about jelly beans.’

It was a big deal for Abby, going through the house by herself, Shanni thought. These kids…

They were the bravest kids. She could see exactly why Pierce didn’t want them separated.

‘Do we have jelly beans?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ Pierce said ruefully. ‘Omission on my part.’

‘No jelly beans?’ She was watching Donald. ‘What sort of a dad is this who doesn’t supply jelly beans?’

‘He’s okay,’ Donald said diffidently.

‘Yes, but he needs help.’ She swallowed. Her shoulder was, in truth, really painful, but this was no time for whinging. Donald looked so white he appeared to be about to pass out. He needed a mum, she thought. He needed someone to cuddle him until the terror passed. But there was something about the set of his small shoulders that said he wouldn’t be accepting cuddles. Not from her. Not from Pierce. He was holding himself aloof.

‘Pen and paper,’ she said. ‘Donald, fast.’

‘What…Why?’

Abby reappeared with Elastoplast. Pierce started cutting and sticking. Ouch, ouch and ouch, thought Shanni.

‘A list,’ she said stoutly. ‘Top of the list-jelly beans.’

‘Next on the list-broom,’ Pierce said and she blinked.

‘We need a broom?’

‘I broke the top off slamming the gate home.’

‘You had a broom? I thought you had a rifle.’

‘A broom.’

‘My hero,’ she muttered. ‘Hero with broomstick. What a man.’

‘Sorry.’ But he was smiling. She’d made him smile, she thought, and it felt okay.

‘So, broom,’ she told Donald. ‘And the makings of hot dogs.’

‘Why hot dogs?’ Pierce asked.

‘Because I feel like a hot dog and I’m wounded. Wounded people can ask for whatever they want.’

‘I like hot dogs,’ Donald said cautiously.

‘I think they’re made from bulls,’ she told him, and she grinned. ‘Double rations of hot dogs just as soon as we can get to the store.’

‘That might be next week,’ Pierce warned her. ‘I get groceries delivered on Monday.’

‘Monday’s too far. If the stores were open now I’d want my hot dog now.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m willing-at great personal sacrifice-to wait till tomorrow. Wendy and I can take care of the house. You can take Donald and do a shopping expedition. A hot dog hunt.’

‘Does that mean you’re staying for a bit?’ Wendy asked, and it seemed like the whole room held its breath.

Was she? She gazed round the room and saw five needful faces. Six if she counted Pierce, who was looking like he was trying to look uninterested.

Needful, too, she thought, but then that was suddenly a dangerous thought.

Ware sympathy, she told herself sternly, but she was still staying. ‘If it’s okay with you,’ she said diffidently, and not looking at Pierce. ‘I’ve come here nursing shattered pride, and now I have a broken shoulder to recover from as well. Recovering might take some time.’

It took time to settle everyone. Shanni sat in the big rocker by the fire while Pierce put his brood to bed. The children’s bedrooms were upstairs as well. She could hear them talking in muted tones. Kids’ questions. Pierce’s rumbling answers. Bessy’s plaintive whinging. More rumbles. A child’s voice-Wendy’s-sounding bossy.

She should go to bed, Shanni thought, but she was still feeling shaky. The gentle rocking of the old chair and the crackling of the flames inside the stove were infinitely comforting.

Silence fell upstairs. She might go to sleep where she was, and that didn’t seem a bad option. Preferable to going to a strange bed.

But some plans were doomed to failure.

‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ It was Pierce, standing in the doorway, staring across at her in concern.

‘I’m going,’ she said without much conviction. ‘As soon as I’m warm.’

‘It’s a warm night.’

‘I guess it is. I just got cold.’

He looked worried. But he was standing in the doorway, not coming further. ‘You want more of that whisky?’

‘No. I…I shouldn’t.’

‘Me neither. But it’s scary how much I want some.’ He shook his head. ‘Hell, Shanni, I’m sorry.’

‘You said the gate was locked.’

‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ He hesitated, but he still wasn’t coming further into the room. ‘I’ve just double checked. The chain’s been cut with bolt cutters. And someone’s stirred Clyde up. I’m not threatening to turn him into sausages any more. He’s standing against the fence, trembling almost as much as you are. There’s a series of tiny puncture wounds along his flank. I’d suspect something like a peashooter’s been used to hurt him. Normally if you opened Clyde’s gate he wouldn’t even notice it was open. But, if you opened it and started shooting pellets at him, he’d get terrified. He’d lumber into the garden, and if he kept hurting and he didn’t understand why then he’d be likely to attack anything that moved.’

She was staring at him, horrified. ‘But that’s…that’s criminal. That’s awful.’

‘They’ll be aiming at me,’ he said grimly. ‘They’ll assume it’d be me who’d go out and check on cattle loose in the garden. They’d never assume it’d be a seven-year-old.’

‘Do they hate you that much?’

‘It’s not hate,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s just they don’t know me. I’m a weekend millionaire who stopped a factory going ahead that the community needed. The fact that no one warned me is irrelevant. And now, as well as being rich and stupid and forcing the community to lose its factory, I’m a single dad who Social Welfare has in its sights for child neglect. Yeah, they’d like me to pack up and leave.’

‘So why don’t you?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I…’

‘You could go back to your architecture in the city. The kids could go to school and to day care. You could hire a housekeeper easier in the city.’

‘It won’t work.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I’m not sure it’d work. Maybe it’ll come to that, but Maureen badly wanted these kids to have space.’