But all of this was of a moment’s impression, for already Miss Trent had crossed Crown Street, dodging between an overloaded drayman’s cart and a timber merchant’s wagon and avoiding the horse droppings, looking to left and right, then going into the doctor’s rooms.

This was a surprise, though no more so than if she had gone into the apothecary or the pawnbroker or, come to that, the small church. For none of these places suggested appointments to which one hurried. But it was to the doctor’s rooms that Miss Trent had gone, entering down the laneway between the bookshop and the grocer’s, for the doctor’s rooms were, it appeared, upstairs and reached by way of the laneway and a dark flight of stairs.

Miss Trent had gone and Eleanor stood for a moment, pondering the sign: DR J.M.H. LEAVIS, MD.

What now? Already her mad dash after this woman, her journey to this part of the city, seemed absurd. The powerlessness bubbled up again and she stood in the street, lost.

A hansom cab sidled into Crown Street clearly in need of a fare and Eleanor hailed it and climbed in. She called out an address to the man and sat back, having no wish to be seen, and was relieved when the driver urged his horse on and in a short time she was leaving Crown Street and Surry Hills behind, heading north once more.

When at last she dared to turn and look out of the window, the cab was passing a young woman hurrying along the street. A domestic judging by the woman’s uniform, and at large, perhaps, without her employer’s knowledge. The servant looked just like Alice—but from behind they all did, and Eleanor reached up to pull down the little blind.

She returned to the same Woolloomooloo street, its faded mid-century elegance no less noticeable and no less poignant in the middle of the day than it had been earlier in the morning. There seemed to be not a soul about and at the shuttered windows of the silent houses, each set in its overgrown oasis of lawn and shrubbery, no one stirred.

On this second visit Eleanor ordered the cab pull up right outside the house and this time she entered boldly through the front door, she took the wide staircase rather than the lift. She reached the first floor and she stooped beside the brass pot and her fingers found the key at once. She stood and slid the key into the lock—a cheap key, she saw, and a cheap lock, but suitable, no doubt, for someone who had little of value and little worth stealing. The door swung open and she stepped inside, pushing the door shut with a click behind her.

For a time her breath came unevenly, for there is nothing so thrilling or terrifying as standing illicitly in another’s home.