Hazel did some further digging among the papers already in her possession, to find the date of the divorce. William Gale had cited Alice’s adultery as the cause of their rift and yet his marriage to this Mrs Lockwood had taken place only weeks later. It seemed a bit too neat, that both William and Alice should have been involved with new loves at exactly the same moment. Hazel wondered if Alice had been framed, in order for William to obtain the freedom to legitimize his unborn child. She knew enough history to be aware that to be born a bastard in Victorian society was to live for ever under the cloud of disgrace. And yet, Alice had travelled to Australia with the same Dr Nolan whose name was mentioned in the report of the divorce proceedings. And then she had married him: he couldn’t have been only a pretext of William Gale’s.

You could never find out everything, she realized. A family consisted of elders long buried, as well as the living: stories were the bridges that connected the generations. But not everyone had a story. Looking through the papers and researching online, Hazel saw that you could look all you liked at birth certificates and marriage certificates and death certificates and census and baptismal records, but you couldn’t always fill in the gaps that made the fabric of a life. Nor could you know the things that really mattered, what someone’s voice was like, their movements. Their motives and desires. Until cameras became an item owned by most families – and when was that, the 1960s? – you couldn’t even see someone’s smile. Hazel thought that would’ve been a beautiful thing, to have your ancestors smile at you across the centuries. But the photographic studio portraits of Alice’s time required that the sitter be still, maintain a certain gravitas. Probably in those days they all had terrible teeth, too, another reason the antique sitters had kept their mouths clamped shut. Even in old wedding photographs there was no sign of joy or of affection. Brides and their grooms were grim-faced, as if facing a prison sentence. There were no snapshots of people laughing at a shared joke, their eyes shaded by a tree; no casual, carefree holiday pictures.

Among the older papers there was a large padded envelope with William Gale written on the outside in her mother’s writing. How many birthday cards and Christmas cards, how many gift labels and postcards had Hazel received, in that same writing? The sight of it made her feel at once hollow with sadness. Her poor, broken mother.