The man stepped smartly down its front steps holding a leather portfolio tucked under his arm. He might be a man of law, a businessman, a purveyor of insurances, though his hat—a tall hat covered with good silk—suggested otherwise. He disappeared momentarily as he passed behind the monstrous banksia but now reappeared and set off the along the street in the direction of the wharves. He did not pause to look about him, yet there was something about his gait, the movement of his head, the tightly controlled way in which his arms held the leather portfolio so close to his body that suggested an awareness of the world about him and hinted that his place in it, at this moment, was not altogether legitimate.

Or so it seemed to Eleanor as she observed from the cover of her cab fifty yards up the street.

The gentleman was her husband.

He had been inside the house perhaps half an hour. It could not be much longer. Less time than she had anticipated.

She studied the house. It was large, extravagant even, but worn, faded, its best days behind it. What sort of young lady lived here? The answer, of course, was no lady at all. Some other sort of woman.

She had brought with her the note, still in its envelope, that someone—who?—had sent to her four days ago. She pulled the note from her reticule though she did not read it. She knew its contents. She had brought it with her as talisman or warrant or weapon, she did not know which, but to legitimise her presence at any rate.

She felt that she had been waiting six months for the note, perhaps longer. Anticipating its arrival with no idea she was doing so.

This house. The note. Her husband’s rapidly diminishing figure. She had her proof. She did not know what to do with it.

What had Adaline Jellicoe done when she had uncovered her husband’s betrayal? Eleanor did not know. She had not spoken to her friend about it. It was possible Adaline had known of Leon Jellicoe’s affair a year ago as she had sat at Eleanor’s bedside offering her silent comfort, that it was this that had driven her to Eleanor’s side, had prompted her compassion.

Calamity, it seemed, struck people differently.

Eleanor sat perfectly still in the cab, one hand clenched on the faded upholstery of the seat, one on the strap that hung from the ceiling. The hat she wore had a fine gauze veil attached to it that she had pulled down on first entering the cab. She viewed the world, she viewed this street, through the delicate film of gauze and was protected by it.

‘Where to, missus?’ called the driver, grown impatient, his horse tossing its head and pawing at the ground. ‘Where to?’