It would become familiar though. Three years’ hard labour. She had said the words over and over in her head until they became an invocation, until they had ceased to have any meaning at all. She made herself think about it now, about the three years’ hard labour.

But she could not do so! She saw the people seated all about her. She saw the mean little dwellings of Riley Street. It would become real only once she had visited Milli there, seen that dreadful place with her own eyes, was witness to Milli’s ruin. Afterwards, she would always picture Milli there, no matter where she was or what she was doing. It would be her punishment. For escaping that life.

The tram lurched forward and the people stood in the aisles as there were no more seats. It stopped outside a Jewish candle maker with a tailor’s premises upstairs. Alice knew this shop, this corner. They had walked these streets as children, hurrying home in the dark from somewhere, carrying something, a loaf of bread, perhaps, still warm from the baker’s oven, on one occasion squabbling about a coin found on the ground or left over from the purchase. And Milli, who was taller and stronger, had easily held the coin out of her reach and Alice had jumped up and down and cried with frustration. When they had got home Mr Purley had taken the penny and struck Milli so that blood poured from her mouth and Alice had run and hidden under the stairs. It was the first time she had hidden there, but Milli had found her. It was the first time Milli had said, I will not let him hurt you, Alice, I will not!

The tram rattled on its way. ‘He is not our real dad,’ Milli had said, often, as though she worried Alice might think Mr Purley was their father, though Alice never had, not for a moment. Milli remembered their real dad, or said she did. Was he a good man? Alice had wondered, but she had never asked, afraid of the answer. No man, in her experience, was good. Father McCreadie, perhaps, but that was different—and she had heard things about him, though he had always been kind to her. And Mr Dunlevy, she supposed, was good, though the rules of good and bad seemed to apply differently to he and Mrs Dunlevy, and she only dimly perceived them. But their real dad, had he been a good man? It had troubled her as a child.

The tram shuddered to a halt. She had taken the tram because it would take her far out of her way and delay the moment of arriving, she saw that now, but the moment was upon her. Here she was already walking up Forbes Street and there was nothing could stop her. Except perhaps herself.