In the ancient Moreton Bay fig the large possum moved up to a higher branch to catch the first trickle of winter warmth from the sun and one or two bedraggled ibis stalked the ground around the tree’s great roots and poked their long bills into the gutters to see what they could find there. The milk cart had already clanked and rumbled its way down the hill to the bay and back up again, and small buttoned-up boys on bicycles had delivered newspapers and goods from the butcher and the grocer. Inside the new villas, servants had already swept the ash from the grates from the night before and lit fires in the bedrooms and breakfast rooms ready for the day ahead.

Eleanor Dunlevy was dressed in a morning gown of oyster grey silk with a woollen shawl wrapped about her shoulders, for the freshly lit fire had not yet lifted the chill from the room. She sat at her writing desk, a pen in her hand and her journal open before her. The curtains were parted just enough to allow a chink of sunlight to fall across the desk in a pleasing way. She considered what she would write. A great many images from the previous evening, snatches of words and thoughts and impressions, swirled inside her head. She tried to catch one or two, but they were as fleeting as dreams and she could not quite grasp at them.

It seemed utterly fantastic that a man had appeared and brandished a gun. What had he hoped to achieve? If it had been simply to frighten them all, then she supposed he had achieved his aim, for undoubtedly everyone had been frightened, though none had admitted it afterwards. She wondered if Alasdair had been afraid. It had all happened so quickly one could hardly say what one had done or thought or what others had done.

She heard a footstep outside her door and Alice came in with a brisk, ‘Good morning, madam,’ and crossed the room to draw back the curtains.

Eleanor paused, her pen in her hand, the page opened before her. The swirl of images, thoughts and impressions burst and vanished like bubbles. It was no good; she could not write while Alice was in the room. Indeed, she could not think. She waited, her pen poised above the page. She did not look up; she did not watch as Alice moved about the room, tying back the curtains, retrieving one or two items of clothing or footwear from one place and moving them to another place, opening and closing first one drawer and now a second drawer.

‘Thank you, Alice,’ she said, and finally Alice left with a curtsy and a brief, ‘Yes, madam.’