I shall be glad to take the infant, Mrs Flowers had replied in a hand that was cramped and consequently a little difficult to read, for she had, it seemed, much to convey and the square of the notepaper she used was small and rather cheap. A sum was mentioned and a meeting place proposed two days hence at Sydney Terminal Station at a very late hour appropriate to a transaction such as this. Alice must come alone with the child and bring any clothing the child might have. And the money, of course. The foster parents, she was assured, were a good Christian couple who lived on a parcel of land outside of the city. The child would thrive, the child would be happy and healthy, and Alice would be provided with regular accounts of how it fared. She need have no concerns.

Alice sat at the rear of a tram, the letter in her pocket. She had brought it with her as proof that the woman, Mrs Flowers, existed. She was going to show it to Milli, though how good Milli’s letter reading was or if she would be allowed to read a letter at all Alice did not know, but she had brought it anyway, for luck. As proof.

For Milli did not even know her baby was rescued! She did not know her baby lived. She would be frantic, and Alice imagined herself saying those words, I have saved the baby, Milli!, and she imagined Milli’s face, her tears. Alice’s heart swelled with the joy she was bringing.

She gazed out of the window at the squat workers’ cottages of Darlinghurst. She clutched her ticket and leaned her head against the glass. The day shone brightly but the inside of the tram was musty and dirt-encrusted, and tobacco and spittle had turned the floor to a sticky brown glue. The tram had trundled its way around Potts Point and into Woolloomooloo and was now rattling down Riley Street as though it had all the time in the world and Alice regretted already her decision not to go on foot. The tram was an extravagance but the letter in her pocket, the news she brought, had made her reckless, had made her extravagant. She had never been a bringer of joy before; it was not a role she had ever imagined for herself.

The tram rattled on its way, stopping every hundred yards or so as the people shuffled off and other people shuffled on. The gaol was just a mile or so from the streets she and Milli had grown up in, but everything about this journey was strange and unfamiliar. She may as well have been visiting Milli on the moon, or in Melbourne.