On Monday morning, Val enrolled Nicole at the local primary school, just two streets away. Nicole was clearly daunted, but she gave a brave smile as she said goodbye before a teacher led her toward a classroom. Val caught a glimpse of thirty or so children sitting at low tables and willed her daughter to be happy there. She had seemed popular at her preschool, but it was always hard to be a newcomer.

Nerves tightened in her own stomach as she walked out of the school grounds and onto Darling Street, the main thoroughfare through Balmain. The priority now was to find work, preferably a job that could fit around school hours. She started by asking in all the shops on the nearest five blocks, then she stopped in some small businesses: a print shop, the swimming pool, a metalworks factory. Most said they didn’t have any vacancies. A few asked about her experience and references before telling her they didn’t have anything suitable.

At the metalworks, a sharp-faced man with a moustache regarded her wedding finger, where she still wore her ring. “Is your husband so poor he has to send his wife out to work?” he asked.

Val blushed and admitted, “My husband and I are recently separated.”

He looked at her with a mixture of pity and contempt. “Oh dear. Well, we can’t be employing your sort here,” he said.

It’s not my fault, she wanted to tell him. I never broke a single one of Tony’s bones. I didn’t make him a prisoner in his own home. She paused, then turned away at the look in his mean eyes. She’d be wasting her breath.

She didn’t want to work in a pub, because the shifts would start after Nicole finished school and she couldn’t afford to pay someone to mind her for the evening. But as business after business turned her down, she began to get desperate. She only had enough money in her savings to last a few weeks before they would be destitute. She couldn’t ask Peggy to lend her any cash because she and Ken weren’t exactly flush, and Tony would be incandescent with rage at her departure so he was hardly going to volunteer to pay alimony.

It was almost time to collect Nicole from school when Val spotted a sign in the window of an office block in the neighboring suburb of Rozelle saying they needed a cleaner. She went inside to inquire and was told there were four floors in which the cleaner had to empty the trash, clean the toilets, and vacuum the carpet; she would start at six in the evening when the staff left and work till she finished. The money was terrible, but they agreed she could bring Nicole with her, so long as she didn’t touch anything. It would have to do, to start with at least.