‘See you tomorrow,’ she said, managing to smile.

But her eyes were shadowed as she sat on the sofa, waiting, waiting, for William to return.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Kedgeree: a suitable breakfast dish

Sauté 1lb freshly drained rice in a plentitude of good butter with 1tbsp fresh curry powder. Add 17oz shredded smoked haddock or smoked salmon. A little cream may be added if it is dry. Serve topped with chopped hard-boiled egg.

SYDNEY, 1878

ROSE

Sydney is . . . empty, thought Rose as she pushed Miss Clementine’s perambulator over the uneven rock cobbles that for some reason covered all the ground that wasn’t buildings here. She was even more firmly Rose now, for her own name was part of her country and now she was no longer there, but here.

Would her country even know her when — if — she managed to get back to it? Would she know her country? The sheep were changing it — the big flood would never have risen so high if the sheep had not made the ground too hard for the water to soak in, if the white men had not killed the trees so that the water could run faster, leaving logs that made great dams and then collapsed, creating strange tides the river had never known before.

Sydney smelled of people, buildings and roads and gardens of people, people who didn’t understand how the land worked and so the gardens turned brown with plants that only lasted a year or less and so had no deep roots to find moisture in a dry year, people who did not know where water would run after storms and built streets that washed away, people who must build houses to keep them from the wind and scents around them and so created barrenness.

Worse, they did not see it.

She had a room of her own, at least, in the small three-storey house, a hot room and airless, under the roof, but no one would share a room with a black girl. She had meals with enough food, quite good food, not messed-up kangaroo but roasted meats, potatoes and all the bread she wanted, eaten on the back steps outside the kitchen.

But Mrs Drinkwater wanted her to be here, and Sydney people admired Mrs Flora for some reason Rose didn’t understand and so, even if she was not permitted to go shopping with them to carry packages, she was still allowed to tend the small girl in the nursery, playing catch with her, singing songs to her in the language she still thought in and that she only used in the privacy of this room, and even take out Miss Clementine for a walk down the road and back in her perambulator.