Night came upon the city, bringing with it the army of rats that in the daylight went unseen but as the darkness spread swarmed along every inch of the waterfront from Watsons Bay to Drummoyne. In a small number of suburbs the night brought on a fairy tale of electric-lit drawing rooms and dazzlingly brilliant dining rooms, but in the majority of places the darkness sucked the life out of the streets and the people retreated from it.

In one of these streets a hansom cab crawled. It had come from Devonshire Street, turned into Crown Street and back into Fitzroy. The cab had crossed many of these same streets already, crossing and recrossing Surry Hills from Elizabeth Street to Bourke, from Cleveland Street to Foveaux. Every so often the veiled lady within the cab called out an instruction—slow down, not here, go this way, stop here, go on—and the cab stopped and started and turned back on itself and slowed down and sped up so that the cab driver shook his head and muttered to himself, though it would be a good fare. But have a heart, lady, he thought to himself as they turned once more into Riley Street.

They were seeking someone, he understood that, for the lady sat forward and leaned out of the window when they passed some destitute young girl, or some drunken mother or some down-on-her-luck gin house whore, so that he wondered what exactly she might want with such a person—not that it was any concern of his.

‘Stop! Driver, stop!’ she cried and he called out, ‘Woah!’ to his poor worn-out horse and stopped the cab on the corner where some poor unfortunate soul lay on the ground. But the sky had long since turned grey and then black and you could no more see who it was than you could see the face of the lady beneath her veil.

‘No, go on,’ she said, very quiet, and he sighed and urged his horse on again.

When they approached the corner of Riley and Albion and he saw the great dark mass that was Frog Hollow ahead of them he flicked his whip at the lumbering animal, urging it to hurry past, but the lady called out, ‘Stop! Stop here!’

‘Not here, lady. Ain’t safe.’ And he urged the horse on.

‘I command you to stop!’

And so he did stop.

‘What is this place?’

‘No place for you, lady. You get out here I cannot answer for what might happen and I will not be here waiting when it does.’

Though he would be sorry if it did, for they had spent a time together, he and she, and he had listened to the gathering anguish in her voice and he had an idea that beneath that veil was something so out of his reach it might just break his heart.