Beside her, Danny scribbled away in an exercise book, a lock of blond hair falling unregarded across his eyes.

‘What are you writing?’ she asked.

Danny looked at her, his blue eyes so like his father’s that a chill settled on her. Would she ever be able to look at Danny and not think of the man who had never come home? The young man whose death had forced her into this life of deceit and hard work for which nothing in her upbringing had prepared her.

‘A story about the time Papa was attacked by pirates and fought them off single-handedly.’

Ah … papa.

A pang of guilt stirred in Adelaide’s chest. At nine years old, Danny had begun to notice the absence of a man in his life and the boy’s long-lost father had taken on heroic proportions. She only had herself to blame. It was she who had filled Danny’s head with stories of his brave seafaring father, whom she had given the fictional name of John Greaves, borrowing her mother’s surname. In Adelaide’s story, he had been lost at sea in the months before Danny had been born, forcing her to make the long-planned trip to Australia alone, except for Netty Redley.

‘Mrs Greaves!’ A young woman’s voice carried up the hill.

Adelaide stood and waved at the two women in light dresses toiling up the slope towards her, one carrying a sun hat by its strings and the other pressing her bonnet to her head. A passing stranger would take them for friends, three young women passing time together on a mild, early summer’s day, but Sissy and Nell were working girls, dancers employed in the establishment referred to in hushed and disapproving tones by the respectable matrons of Maiden’s Creek as ‘that place’, and by most of the men of the district as ‘Lil’s Place’. No one knew Lil’s real name. Lily White was a stage name, a soubriquet that had long since faded with her looks, her years and her figure, but the name stuck. Whatever the matrons of Maiden’s Creek might think, Lil ruled her establishment with an iron fist and her girls were safe, clean and generally happy.

The young women sank onto the blanket on either side of Adelaide. Nell took off her bonnet and fanned herself with it as she turned her face to the sun.

‘You will develop a colour,’ Sissy warned.

‘I don’t care. I love the sun. Nothing would induce me to go back to Yorkshire now,’ Nell replied.

‘Lil may have a few words to say if you turn up looking like a carrot,’ Sissy said.

‘Lil don’t scare me. She’s all hot air,’ Nell said. ‘Whore with a heart of gold, just like you and me, Siss.’