And he had said, ‘As you wish,’ and that had been an end to it.

They had not spoken again of the maid or the baby. Eleanor had not said, I accept now that the child was not yours, I was wrong to accuse you, for the baby’s paternity no longer seemed important. And he had not asked her, Where is she now, the maid, Alice? If he had, she would have said, There is nothing we can do for her, we cannot possibly have a maid with a baby. But Alasdair had not asked. And Alice had not been found.

Eleanor no longer knew why she had gone out and searched for the girl—if her purpose had been to give her money, or to provide the address of the asylum, she had failed to do either. But girls like that knew where the asylum was. And there was no question of taking Alice back, with or without the baby, not after what had been said.

Eleanor would go into the agency tomorrow. She would find a new maid. Still, she had a sense she had not done all that she might. Though what else she could have done she did not know. She saw that the hoped-for salvation—of the girl, the baby, of herself—had not occurred.

She thought, Alice should have come to me for help. And this put the blame squarely on the girl’s shoulders. All that had followed lay at her door.

But would I have helped? Eleanor wondered.

The government had decreed the day a holiday but not everyone was enjoying the holiday and not every place was closed. The telephone rang in the hallway of the Dunlevys’ house in the middle of the afternoon, which it did rarely enough even on a normal day, for the number of subscribers was small still and so there were very few whom one might telephone and very few who might telephone one. But today the telephone rang.

Eleanor waited for a time to see if the telephone would cease to ring of its own accord, and when it did not she went downstairs and picked up the telephone receiver. She held the instrument close her ear and said, clearly and distinctly, ‘This is the Dunlevy residency. Who is calling, please?’ because there was no maid to answer the call and Mrs Flynn had not come in today so that they were, effectively, on their own.

‘I am afraid I do not understand you. Who is calling, please?’ She did not recognise the voice, a man’s, and rather muffled and faint, as if he called from a great distance, though in fact the man who telephoned was less than a mile away.