The story was hidden away on page five of the Herald, in among the Divorce Court listings, the reports from the quarter sessions and an advertisement for a family cough mixture, and Eleanor, seated at breakfast with a cup of coffee, almost missed it.

A heat flared up in her so fiercely her face grew hot and red. Her hands shook and in her haste to turn the page she tore the newspaper. But the story was gone now. In its place, page six was safe and calming, a refuge filled with the upcoming Federation referendum—though, even here, those insistent black headlines swam before her eyes, stripped of meaning. On her face her flesh burned. It betrayed her.

Well, and what of it? There was no one but herself to witness it. Alasdair had breakfasted early; he was now upstairs in his study preparing for the day ahead. She breakfasted alone.

She placed the newspaper on the table, she removed the reading glasses her husband did not know she wore.

The maid, Alice, burst into the room brandishing muffins fresh from the oven and butter in a little dish. (Or it seemed to Eleanor that the maid burst in and brandished. All was extreme and excessive this morning.) Alice curtsied. She placed the muffins on the table and Eleanor searched for hidden meanings in the maid’s mumbled, ‘Madam.’ After a time Alice withdrew.

Eleanor picked up the newspaper. She turned back to page five.

It was there still. The words remained. She read them again—slower this time, for what if she had been mistaken the first time? She was not mistaken. It was Miss Trent.

Eleanor closed the newspaper and looked to the window. The frangipani was bald at this time of year, and on an upper branch a large black-and-white currawong was perched, whistling and trilling with an urgency that suggested some predator was about. It turned its head this way and that emitting an urgent warning.

It had not occurred to her that Miss Trent might die. There had been blood on the carpet, a spot or two. Perhaps more by the time she had left. If she had thought Miss Trent might die, that Miss Trent was in mortal danger, what might she have done? Eleanor did not know. Perhaps nothing, perhaps something.

She had gone to the police. They had waited overnight and then come for her and, it seemed, had saved the girl’s life. If the police had not come, who would have? Perhaps no one.

So, did I condemn the girl to death or did I save her life? Eleanor wondered. She did not know. She had wished to play with fate, hadn’t she? To alter destinies. Now that she had played God she felt a little sick. A little frightened.

She saw that her own part in the incident was not mentioned in the newspaper. No one knew of it except herself and the girl, Miss Trent.