And would Albury be the capital? Alasdair wondered. It had made a good case, as good as any other place. He thought of the long and uncomfortable train journey they had endured to get here, of the cattle wandering unheeded down the main street, of the farmers and landowners riding into town on horseback and his heart sank. It was a loathsome place! They were all loathsome places. When he envisaged the nation’s capital he imagined himself in an elegant house on Flinders Street overlooking the Yarra. He imagined himself in Melbourne. Was he the only one who dreaded the idea of a capital out here in the middle of a barren nothing, built on dirt and fit only for squatters? Why, look at the mess the Canadians had made of it! Mr Dibbs, the anti-federalist, had visited that country the year before and had found Ottawa, their newly built federal capital, to be a small place with no decent hotel and a railway station smaller than many of Sydney’s suburban stations. When he had enquired where the people of the capital were to be found, he was told they were out of town as parliament was not sitting.

Was this their future then? Had the people of New South Wales learned nothing from the blunder of their sister colony across the sea?

The elegant house overlooking the Yarra. It had grown and grown in his imaginings over the months until he could picture the wallpaper in the breakfast room, the carpet on the staircase, the light fixtures, the entrance hall. Even down to the ivory-topped cane in the hallway that the servant would hand to him and the walk he would make along the river towards the new parliament—all of it, every unspoiled, incredible detail. And the woman who sat opposite him at that breakfast table, he had pictured her too. Of course he had! She had been the crowning glory, the queen at the heart of the palace he had built!

Now, when he attempted to look into the eyes of his queen, his eyes slide from her face. Try as hard as he might, he could not see her. She no longer had a face. She no longer had a name.

And somehow a whole week had passed since he had gone to the hospital and he had made no enquiries since. If Verity lived or not, he did not know.

There was no way back, he saw, aghast. No way at all.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the Premier, and the buttons of his waistcoat strained, ‘the struggle which is to culminate on June twenty is going to be victory for Federation!’

The floor erupted into wild applause and the Premier beamed and allowed himself to be slapped on the back and heartily congratulated.