Eleanor walked rapidly away from the house for the third time that day, not noticing in which direction she walked. The day had not gone as she had imagined it would—though now she was uncertain what, exactly, she had imagined. Her idea of how things might go seemed, at best, misguided. That one might believe one could predict, perhaps even dictate, how something would be was absurd, deluded. One was an observer, a player in a larger game that someone else—God or fate—was controlling. Perhaps there was no game at all and life was simply a series of events, one leading on from another, utterly random, utterly unpredictable.

But she was, surely, more than simply a passive instrument of fate?

On she walked. And on.

But I feel nothing, she thought. Nothing.

What did one do now? Collapse, as Miss Trent had done? Sit down and reflect? Pull out the letter and read again those same words: My dearest … ? She had gone to Miss Trent’s aid. She did not know why she had done so. Except that Miss Trent might have died. Would that have been preferable?

One could not commit murder.

Eleanor walked south and eventually she found a police station. She was not sure if she was in Woolloomooloo or Kings Cross or Potts Point, but here was a police station with a blue lamp over the doorway and a drunken man lying sentry beneath it. She sidestepped the man and walked up the steps and spoke to the constable at the desk. She was taken to a room.

Here she sat for a time on a hard wooden chair before a wooden table, another chair facing her. She waited. This was a punishment, she saw, this waiting, leaving her in this room for a longer time than she could endure. For it turned out that she did not feel nothing. It turned out that the difference between feeling nothing and feeling it all was an instant, a moment, a breath. She placed her hands on her lap and pressed down on her thighs.

She had never felt such terror.

When the policeman came in she informed the man she wished to report a crime. She wished to report an illegal abortion performed that very day by a Dr Leavis of Surry Hills on a Miss Verity Trent of Woolloomooloo.

CHAPTER TWELVE: HARD LABOUR

CHAPTER TWELVE

HARD LABOUR

On that same day, the first Friday in June, the Premier’s Tour of the North arrived at Murwillumbah. On Saturday it moved on to Lismore then Byron Bay. Sunday being a day of rest, it was Monday when the party arrived at Grafton.

It was on Monday, too, that Alice Nimrod, late in the afternoon, stood gazing up the daunting edifice that was Darlinghurst Courthouse.