She did not answer him, instead hastened to open the door, struggling with the handle because her fingers would not do as she wished, had grown stiff and clumsy. At last she got it and the door swung open and she stepped down from the cab. With no warning, the ground surged up, it became as malleable as water. For a moment the world went black. She steadied herself against the cab, aware of the horse, its massive hindquarters, its nervous twitching head, its eyes swivelled around to view her.

‘Y’right, lady?’ The cab driver, peering down from his perch.

She pulled herself back. It was intolerable that he should see her tears.

She paid the man, handing him the coins and not caring if it was too much or too little, and turned away at once because his eyes on her face, even with the veil, was unbearable. He was a witness.

She did not wait for the cab to depart but set off along the street and her legs were foreign and unfamiliar to her and did not do as she wished. She stopped when she came to the old house, thrusting aside the teeming banksia with its host of noisy lorikeets, and after a moment’s pause taking the steps that her husband had come down a few minutes earlier.

At the front door she paused, not quite able to catch her breath. She put a hand against the peeling paintwork of the house to steady herself. Beneath her fingers a large flake of paint came away, revealing powdery brickwork. The flake of paint drifted to the ground. She placed the toe of her boot on it and it shattered into dust at her feet.

Something made her spin around, a sound, eyes somewhere watching, but the street was deserted. The cab had gone. She turned back to the house. A wooden signboard was nailed to the wall before her on which the names of the residents were inscribed. Her eyes ran over the list of names, drawn to and repelled in turn by each one. Maj. T.H. Jenkins, Mrs T. Fowler, Mrs S. Longfellow, Mr T.E. Barnes, Capt. K. Littlejohn, Miss V. Trent, Mrs and Miss U. Tiptree. She went back to Miss V. Trent of flat 6, for she was the only Miss on the list aside from the Miss who resided with her mother, or possibly with her married sister. On the whole, Miss Trent appeared the most likely.