The saleswoman telephoned Qantas, and Val listened to the one-sided conversation with increasing gloom. “Stopover in Singapore . . . then a transfer. Can you fly direct from Singapore to Peking? . . . Uh-huh. And does Harbin have an airport? . . . Uh-huh. . . . Can you give me a ballpark? One woman and a child traveling?”

She hung up the phone and wrote a figure on a slip of paper before handing it to Val. Six hundred and twenty dollars. It might as well have been six thousand. She felt tears pricking her eyelids.

“I see. And how about the cost of going by ship?”

The woman picked up a shipping brochure and skipped through the pages.

“There aren’t any tourist sailings from Sydney to China, but merchant ships often take passengers. Let me make a call for you.”

Val gripped the edge of her seat, praying under her breath as the travel agent was shunted from one department to another until she found someone who knew what they were talking about. “A hundred and twenty? . . . Sharing a cabin?”

She looked at Val.

“When’s the next sailing?” Val asked.

The agent repeated her question, then relayed the reply. “Third of May. Takes three weeks to Tianjin, then you’d have to catch a train to Peking and from there to Harbin. I can book the Harbin train for you. Is that any use?”

It was only two weeks till the third of May. How on earth would she raise the money?

“It could be,” she said brightly. “Thanks for finding out. I’ll drop by and let you know if I can make that one.”

“You’ll need visas,” the agent told her. “You get them at the consulate.”

Somehow I have to manage this, Val thought on the way home. Nicole was holding her hand as she hopped, trying not to land on cracks in the paving stones, and it jerked her arm up and down. It could be my only chance.

She went to apply for their visas the very next day. That was the easy bit. The money for the tickets was going to be much harder to find.

* * *

The following Saturday evening, Val was washing the dinner dishes around ten when there was a loud knock on the door. She glanced into the bedroom, but Nicole was fast asleep and didn’t stir. Who could be calling on her at such a time? It must be a neighbor, because they were on the landing outside rather than down at the street door.