Even at this late hour and on such a dreadful night people gathered, made sluggish by the rain, lugging great boxes and trunks, dragging crying children, pausing in the entranceway to open and close umbrellas and shake sodden hats or just taking shelter, putting off the moment when they must leave the station and go outside. The rain had created great puddles that splashed mud up over the women’s skirts and over the men’s boots as they ran through them. A porter hurried past with head bent and hat pulled low. He glanced at Alice with her bundle as he passed but did not stop her; no one’s gaze lasted more than a second. It was not the night to be asking questions. And perhaps many young women came alone to this station late at night clutching babies to their breasts.

I am late, thought Alice, but she did not move. She stood in the ticket hall, patting the baby’s back and gazing about her, struck dumb for a moment, for this was the station of their dreams, where she and Milli had come often as children. The station was new then, the fearful old shed that had stood for twenty years replaced with this stone-and-brick creation, all archways and beautiful brickwork and big solid walls. Like a church, Milli had said, except that here no one told you what to do or think. Here was a place that made no demands on you and instead offered you the chance of escape, or at least the chance to dream of escape. They had never once taken a train, but they had watched the people who had journeyed here from Penrith and Bowenfels and Mount Victoria, the trains that had come over the mountains. They had stood at the departure board and Milli had said, ‘I shall catch any train, Alice. Any train to Emu Plains,’ for that was where the trains went, and together they had imagined a place called Emu Plains. Milli had caught a train, years later and all the way to Melbourne, and whether she had ever gone to Emu Plains Alice did not know.

She did know that this station would be gone soon too, the whole thing pulled down, all these archways and this beautiful brickwork, though it had stood barely twenty years, and a new station, much grander, would be erected right where the old cemetery stood. Mr Dunlevy had talked of it over breakfast. A grand new station built on a cemetery.

A clock chimed the quarter hour and Alice picked up her skirts and ran towards the platforms, passing each one until she reached platform 14. It was the last one, squeezed in as an afterthought, the furthest away, the hardest to reach, the least used.