‘Will they kill us?’

‘I don’t think so.’

They lived in a two-room lodging in the sawmill district of a town in Carinthia, only four hours by train from Vienna, but seeming to belong to a different world. The narrow streets where they lived had small brick houses and goods depositories used by a dwindling river trade.

Lena often asked about her father. ‘I’ve told you. His name was Stefan,’ was all that Carina would say.

‘Was? Is he still alive?’

‘I don’t know. Stop asking questions.’

‘How can you not know?’

Born in the poor wing of the hospital, Lena was named after a character in a song her mother had once liked. The doctor made his rounds two days later. ‘And will this child be given up to the orphanage at St Spyridon’s?’ he said, looking at her as she lay in bed, feeding the baby. ‘Like the others?’

‘No,’ said Carina. ‘I’ve decided to keep her.’

She had had no such thought until that moment.

‘And how will you feed and clothe her?’

‘I’ll find work. At the mills. Or maybe here at the hospital. I can scrub the floors.’

‘I know the people at the clinic on the Wilhelmskogel. They might be able to offer you some work.’

‘The madhouse?’

‘Yes, they have a very … enlightened attitude. It’s a big place and they always need housekeeping. Cleaning, laundry and so on.’

The doctor was no older than Carina, but had a sense of his own importance. He looked at her over his glasses and said, ‘You can see the lady almoner on your way out and she can give you some clothes for the baby.’

‘All right.’

He sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘The child is a responsibility, you know. If you’re going to look after her, you should make sure you have no more children. And you should be sober.’

Carina said nothing.

‘Do you want the child to be baptised? The priest can do it here in the hospital if you like.’

She ought to go back to Trieste, where Stefan lived. If he still lived there and had not gone to sea again …

‘Well, would you like the child baptised or not?’

‘Yes, I would.’

When she was allowed home with the baby, people noticed something different in Carina. It seemed that instead of avoiding the neighbours, she was studying them. She looked surprised at the early hour at which they went to work, but she took in the way they dressed and talked to one another; she watched when they left home again in the evening to spend their money in cafés. The neighbours were amused to feel themselves inspected, even by a woman with bloodshot eyes.

The Wilhelmskogel clinic agreed to give Carina work as a cleaner, but it was an hour’s walk from town and then a cable car up to the top. She had to take the baby with her. A blind woman called Mary, who did massages for the patients, would often look after Lena while Carina worked. She went only two days a week and had to make more money in other ways. At home, there was some passing trade from the dock workers and river pilots, but it wasn’t easy to entertain men with her baby in a basket in the corner.