It was disagreeable, it was distasteful, but to have it remarked on in as many words made it plain to Eleanor just how far her friend had fallen. She offered a hopeful smile while knowing the situation was without hope.

‘Leon is being difficult,’ said Adaline, staring down at her lap. ‘About the children. About the settlement.’

The tea arrived on a tray, with lemons and sugar in a silver bowl, in the tentative hands of Alice, the maid. These things offered reassurance and normalcy and Eleanor fell upon them greedily.

‘Here, Alice,’ she said, indicating, ‘place the tray here,’ and then watching as the girl departed and the room turned cold once more.

‘I wondered if perhaps Alasdair—who is his friend—might speak with Leon,’ said Adaline, as though the arrival of the tea was nothing. ‘I wondered if he might …’

But her words, her plea for help, hung in the air, unfinished. She attempted to complete it with her hand, lifting it into the air and describing an arc, but when this too failed she sat immobile on the settee. Her tea went undrunk.

Beyond the room the maid moved from place to place. In the kitchen sounds could occasionally be heard.

‘You are quite well?’ enquired Eleanor, as though the plea had not been made. As though this was like any other call from any other caller. She saw Adaline at her bedside a year ago, placing a hand on hers and holding it tightly. She recalled the sudden stillness of the bedroom at that moment. The calmness that had descended for a time when all about her had been, up to that moment, chaos. ‘And the children? They are well?’

And when Adaline nodded once, a slight jerk of her head, and said in her strange brittle voice, ‘Yes, quite well,’ Eleanor felt the shame of her questions.

It struck her they were same, she and Adaline. Miss Verity Trent, and the housekeeper, Dora Hyatt. Leon and Alasdair. That this must draw them closer, this shared horror. And there was a moment, as Eleanor sat on the very edge of her settee, nursing her cup of tea, when it seemed the space between herself and Adaline could be traversed. That the relief that this would bring her would be worth the horror—

But the moment passed. She stared it down until it wilted and was gone.

‘Alasdair has been so busy, of course, with his meetings,’ she said. ‘The Federation,’ she added, lest Adaline, in her despair, had forgotten.

She saw then how unimportant it must seem to Adaline, the Federation. This colony which she was soon to leave, or so one understood, with its absurd referendums. These politicians, squabbling. But politicians squabbled in England, too, one presumed.