In the dining room the lunch things were only partly cleared away, another task unfinished. Alice moved quickly, though her body was sluggish and unwilling. She saw Mr Dunlevy’s newspaper on the table where he had left it that morning and she opened the newspaper, though this was not a part of her duties. She cast her eye over the very pages, the very words Mr Dunlevy had cast his eyes over and there was no difference between them, Mr Dunlevy the parliamentarian and Alice Nimrod the servant, for they both read the newspaper, they both saw the same things. Or so it seemed to Alice, for whom the unfinished and unattended tasks of the day nagged only vaguely in some distant room. She read advertisements for patent medicines and agricultural tools and ladies’ corsets, advertisements for men seeking employment and other men seeking workers, for possessions lost and possessions found. And this was what Mr Dunlevy read! It was extraordinary to her. She saw—though she had not sought it—an advertisement that read, Childless couple seeks baby to adopt or to care for. Good Christian home. Reply to Mrs Flowers at the address given. She saw that there were many other similar advertisements beside this one: more couples wishing to adopt, and they were all good Christians, it seemed, and women seeking couples who wished to adopt. These women too were all good Christians. And so were their babies, though this was implied rather than stated. So many babies, so many childless couples. A veritable trade in babies was going on amid the pages of Mr Dunlevy’s newspaper. But this one, this Mrs Flowers, was the only one that offered to care for and not simply adopt. At a cost.

For the first time, Alice saw this wondrous thing, her sister’s baby, that only the day before she had snatched from the courthouse with no thought as to the consequences and for which she now found herself solely responsible, as the burden it surely was. And would be for the next three years.

She had failed, she realised, before she had even begun, for she could not hope to keep it. But she would not give it up! Not her sister’s child, she would not! But if she could send it away to safety, to be cared for, to have a better chance than she and Milli had had, perhaps, even to be loved—