Since her return from Australia, Emma had made every effort to accept the loss of her son. But somehow she could not come to terms with it. Angry, bitter and confused, she fought against a natural grieving process. There were no tears to ease the awful pain inside her. Instead, there was only a hard core of resentment in her heart. She had built a wall of destructive emotion around her memories, which no one, not even Marlow, could penetrate.

In these past weeks, Emma had taken to frequenting Corporation Park, where she, Nelly and the boy had spent many happy hours. Always she came alone, staying sometimes the whole afternoon, when she would wander the meandering walkways, avoiding the spot where young Bill had tumbled to his death. Marlow had remarked so often how, if only Emma could bring herself to look again on that place, she might realize how final was the parting between herself and the boy she adored. But nothing would persuade her in that direction. Nor would she be drawn into any conversation regarding either the tragic incident or her own thoughts on it. Even now, after all these months, she refused to visit that corner of the churchyard where he had been laid to rest. The priest’s well-intended visits to the house on Park Street had been greeted with such hostility that, at Marlow’s request, he had ceased to call, entreating both Marlow and Nelly to ‘do what you can to persuade Emma into the House of God where she must surely find a measure of peace’.

Emma had resisted all efforts to restore her faith in the Almighty. In her bitterness she could not forgive him; though outwardly she showed little sign of her turbulent feelings. Instead she appeared cool, reasonable to a fault, and stalwart in her support of Marlow’s continued success in the transporting business. But, as Nelly had pointed out to Marlow only the other day, ‘The spark seems to have gone out of our Emma… and it breaks my heart ter see how she’s quietly torturing herself.’

Marlow had reassured the anxious Nelly; in truth he also was deeply concerned for Emma’s state of health. She adamantly refused to see a doctor. To Marlow’s heartfelt plea that Emma must ‘reconsider this awful business between you and your uncle, Caleb Crowther… raking up so much bitterness and pain from the past with which to further torment yourself’, she would only concede with great reluctance to ‘delay the setting of a new date for the hearing’. Because, to Emma’s mind, the very root of her pain was Caleb Crowther himself, and when a root was so rotten that it contaminated all it touched, then that same root must be mercilessly chopped out and destroyed.

All the same, Emma was in no great hurry to bring her despicable uncle to task, for to her way of thinking, the longer the delay, the more he would be made to suffer. Let him believe that she was having second thoughts about the charges she was bringing against him. Let him wallow in a false sense of security. The shock to his conniving heart would be all the greater when he was eventually made to answer her allegations.