The moon was newly risen and still low in the sky and a strip of moonlight struck the floor and a corner of the bed, reaching as far as the writing desk. She saw that the drawer to her desk was slightly open when she had certainly locked it the day before. She touched the drawer and found that the lock was broken. She ran her fingers along the bevelled wooden edge of the desk, along the jagged metal of the broken lock.

Alasdair had done this. She could not tell when. Last night, perhaps, while she had been out. And she had not noticed it when she had come home. She sat on the bed. She could not imagine what it was he looked for.

She felt that she was not sure what either of them looked for.

And all this time there had been a child, secreted upstairs. The wonder of it struck her.

But how had the child come to be here? She saw, in her imagination, Alice, dashing through darkened streets in the rain, wrapped in a sodden shawl, holding the newborn to her breast. Bringing it, for safety, to this house. (For where else could she take it?) This vision, of the young girl and the infant at her breast, so vivid, so compelling. It seemed to Eleanor almost biblical in its timelessness. Its sadness. She could not rid herself of it.

The thought that she had made a dreadful, dreadful mistake crept in around the very edges of her consciousness. That she had treated the girl shamefully, or worse, circled around and around her head.

Mrs Flynn knew it. Had been flustered and embarrassed in her attempts to hide her knowledge from her employer. It had been a mistake to ask Mrs Flynn for Alice’s whereabouts.

The household was destroyed, Eleanor saw. She did not see how it could ever be salvaged. If she located the girl, if she rescued Alice and the child from whatever miserable place it was they sheltered in, well, there could be no question of offering the girl her position again. That was quite impossible, and Alice would not expect it. But she might offer help. She might offer money, a testimonial. She saw that this was the very least a Christian woman could do.

Eleanor stood up.

She realised she was crying, had been crying for some little time, the tears running silent and unbidden down her face. She did not want to care what happened to a wretched maid, but she saw that, if she saved this girl, she might also save herself.