Miss V. Trent now stooped to place her door key inside the brass pot of the largest of the oversized ferns. She straightened herself up and adjusted her gloves, took a quick, sharp breath and departed down the wide staircase.

Eleanor did not move. She did not speak. The words she had prepared and rehearsed were gone as Miss Trent was gone. She stared at her hand on the rounded ivory handle of her parasol, at the hem of her coat as it brushed the floor of the lift. She put out a hand to the side of the lift to feel its cold metallic reassurance but her fingers felt nothing. She felt her powerlessness as she had once or twice experienced grief. It washed over her, sweeping aside all else and leaving her without a breath in her body. She had thought herself stronger than this, but somehow her husband’s betrayal felt like her own failure.

Downstairs the front door opened and then closed.

She wrenched shut the lift doors and stabbed her hand at the button, and the lift lurched as it began its labouring descent.

Miss Trent—if indeed it was she—now proceeded on foot. She made her way in a surprisingly short time to the end of the street and turned into a busier road, heading west. She was hurrying, but where or to whom Miss Trent hurried one could only speculate, or one might if one was not entirely consumed with keeping up with her, at a discreet distance of some twenty yards or so, as Eleanor was.

Miss Trent skirted the wharves and entered the Domain where, on this sunny morning, carriages circled at a leisurely pace and young ladies strolled arm in arm and, in warmer seasons, couples picnicked. But Miss Trent did not stroll, nor did she strike a leisurely pace, and she certainly did not pause to picnic or to gaze at the young men in shirtsleeves noisily playing an unseasonal game of cricket. She traversed the Domain in a surprisingly short time and emerged at the rear of the hospital and onto Macquarie Street. She continued onwards until she reached the tram stop at Elizabeth Street. A green-and-cream-liveried tram approached and trundled to a halt and Miss Trent stepped on board.