Accompanied by a guard, the women reversed their trip of the day before, passing the high stone wall of the Cascades before turning left across the bridge over the stinking tributary and up the incline of Macquarie Street. Fog hung thickly over the top of the mountain above them, a false ceiling for an enclosed world.

Green lizards darted across the road in quick bursts. Royal blue birds swooped among the trees. As they tramped along in silence, Hazel marveled at the beauty of this new world: the flowering purple shrubs, the golden grass by the side of the road shiny with dew, the feathery gray scrub. She thought of her neighborhood in Glasgow, where she’d had to tread carefully along streets coated with a paste of coal particles and manure and stay alert to avoid rubbish thrown from windows. The cramped room she lived in with her mother, with its single clouded window that let in no air and little light, the dirt floor that turned to mud when it rained. The water in the River Clyde that was so lethal that most people, young and old, drank beer instead. How children as young as six worked in factories and mines and were sent out to steal for their parents, as Hazel had done.

Even so, her life in Glasgow wasn’t all anguish and despair. There was plenty she missed. She’d loved navigating the wynds, the winding cobblestone streets that led to the shops in the West End filled with colorful scarves, leather gloves, bolts of shiny fabric. She’d loved picking at the flaky crust of a Scotch pie and feeling it melt on her tongue. Tatties and neeps and haggis, the rare treat of a trifle. The buttery sweetness of shortbread. Drinking chamomile tea laced with honey at the kitchen table on winter evenings, blowing into the steam to cool it. Her mother, she remembered, would put apples in an earthen jar with a sprinkle of cloves, a bit of sugar, some lemon peel, and a splash of red wine. After an hour in the fireplace it became a delicious mash that they ate straight from the jar with spoons.

Hazel felt a surprising surge of longing for her mother—and then, just as quickly, a spike of anger. She was here, in this terrible place, because of her. Hazel didn’t think she could ever forgive her mother for that.

The building that housed the nursery was dilapidated. Inside, the air reeked of vomit and diarrhea. Hazel made her way through a warren of tiny rooms, searching for Ruby. Infants lay three or four to a crib on soiled, flea-ridden bedding. Those old enough to crawl and walk peered out at her silently, like puppies in cages.

“Why are they so quiet?” she asked a guard.

He shrugged. “A lot are sickly. Some of them older ones were never taught to talk.”

When Hazel found Ruby, in an upstairs crib, she, too, was unusually quiet. Hazel scooped her up and took her to the changing room. Her waste was a brackish green.