Even if her child did not. Had Alasdair known about the existence of the baby or about the abortion? Had he arranged the abortion—paid for it, even? For he had gone to her at her home in the hours before she had had the abortion. A bastard child, unwanted. Perhaps he had demanded she rid herself of it. Perhaps the child had not been unwanted.

These were questions no wife should ever be called upon to consider.

This feeling that welled up inside her now, it was nothing so simple as hatred, and she stood, dumb. She would not allow it to overflow or consume her.

Miss Trent had not told Alasdair about the baby, about the abortion. Eleanor felt certain of this as she stood looking down at the girl. Or perhaps she merely wished it to be so. And Alasdair did not visit her in the hospital. Surely that meant—

She could not say what it meant. That he did not know she was here? That he was afraid to come lest he be seen? He was with the Premier in the south while his mistress lay prostrate and helpless. Perhaps it simply meant that the Federation meant more to him than Miss Trent did.

This made her suddenly a little giddy, made her wish to laugh out loud. Made her wish to reach out and strike the face that lay so still on the bed. But the nurse had returned and made a second sweep of Eleanor’s face and so Eleanor turned and left the ward.

In the corridor outside the ward she found James Greensmith clutching a portfolio of papers and a telegram, now opened, and the expression on his face was no longer that of a secretary.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: NO BABIES HERE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

NO BABIES HERE

Clouds blew in over The Gap and rolled over Watsons Bay and Bondi, for occasionally, and confusingly, the weather came in from the ocean and not from the west at all. Rain splashed onto the doorstep of the minister’s house at Elizabeth Bay and the cook, Mrs Flynn, stood at the back door watching it. She was an uncomplicated soul who wasted no energy contemplating the differences between herself and her employer or, by inference, the differences between any two groups of persons in her city, wretched or wealthy or anything in between. If a person made a wrong step in their brief time on earth that was their lookout. She felt no compulsion to point out their error or to offer what little assistance it might be in her power to give. But this morning, these last few days, she found herself unaccountably uneasy.

She spat a stream of tobacco into the camellia bush outside, closed the back door and returned to her kitchen and the pastry she was rolling out.