‘But how can I take you there?’ she cried. ‘You do not understand, Milli. You think because it is a big house you can go there and no one will notice you, but it ain’t so! There is no place where the mistress does not go, no cupboard or drawer she does not open. I cannot hide a mouse without she would find it. And then I would lose my position.’

‘And end up like me!’ said Milli.

And for a time the bitterness of one and the dismay of the other rose and swirled about them and neither could speak.

‘I had the last baby in gaol,’ Milli announced, throwing back her head—in a challenge, it seemed. As though she had been holding back this piece of information and was casting it now into the space between them to see how it might fall.

‘Gaol?’ whispered Alice.

Milli sneered. ‘What of it? I was drunk. A misdemeanour. Twenty-one days they give me. Just enough time to get the baby out. What? You think it is any worse than this?’ And when Alice made no reply, ‘Because it is not. Not really. You get medicine in gaol and a place to sleep, and tea and bread three times a day. They let me keep the baby with me. Until it died.’

Milli turned to gaze through the doorway at the rain pouring steadily. She wore an old woollen shawl, which she pulled closer about her thin shoulders.

‘You think it wicked, don’t you?’ she said, thrusting her face close to her sister’s though Alice had said nothing. ‘That is what you think, ain’t it, Alice? That it is wicked? That I am wicked?’

Wicked? Alice was baffled by the word. She had not heard it used since Father McCreadie had rescued her from this life and put her in another. It was a word, an idea, for priests. For rich people.

Alice stared at her sister. Her lips moved but no words came. For a time neither spoke, then, ‘I have borrowed money, Alice,’ said Milli at last. ‘And I cannot repay it. If I stay here a day longer, they shall slit my throat.’ She stood up and at once sat down again. ‘Where am I safe if you will not help me? Tell me.’

Alice could not speak. She remembered standing on the railway platform five years ago, waving goodbye. I just wanted you to take me with you, she thought. But Milli had left her behind. And now, for the first time, she realised just how lucky she had been.

CHAPTER THREE: THE RUM HOSPITAL

CHAPTER THREE

THE RUM HOSPITAL

A line of carriages was drawn up in front of the colonnaded two-storey building on Macquarie Street that had once been the Chief Surgeon’s quarters of the Sydney Hospital next door, and was now Parliament House.