There followed an endless and uncomfortable moment, during which Emma looked directly into Nelly’s reddening face, and Nelly nervously fidgeted with her podgy fingers – a sure sign that she was feeling guilty. ‘You’re not telling me everything, are you?’ Emma asked softly. Again, the ensuing silence was awkward.

‘Don’t know what yer mean… I’ve just telled yer what happened.’ Nelly was on the defensive, and to Emma, who knew her only too well, Nelly was displaying all the old familiar signs of guilt. Emma had lost count of the times in Australia when Nelly had committed some misdemeanour or other, and had always managed to worm her way out of it. Not this time though, vowed Emma, ‘I shan’t budge until you tell me what it is you’re keeping back,’ she told Nelly now. ‘You did have somebody in this house. Look… all I have to do is go and ask Miss Warburton… or the maid. They’re not blind… there isn’t much that goes on in this house they’re not aware of,’ she warned, ‘but I know you’d prefer me not to give your “friend” Miss Warburton the chance to gloat. Am I right?’

‘Yer a bugger o’ the worst order, that’s what you are!’ retorted Nelly, but she knew how stubborn Emma could be if the mood took her. Her idea of going to the servants for information though would not bear fruit, because Marlow had given instructions that they were not to admit to the woman and child being in the house.

‘Please, Nelly.’ Emma’s voice was pleading. ‘You can’t have any idea how important it is to me that I find out how this part of my father’s timepiece came to be here. If there is the slightest chance that I can recover it all, it would mean so very much to me.’

Nelly couldn’t bear to see Emma so desperate. She should tell her everything and suffer the consequences, she thought. Or live to regret deceiving this darling woman for the second time. But what about Marlow’s instructions? Oh, she would deal with that when the time came, she told herself. For now, Emma was asking for the truth, and she deserved nothing less.

Nelly told her everything, reminding her about the little thief who had winked at Emma on the day when they had arrived in England some years back, and how Nelly had saved her from being flung in a cell during Emma’s absence. She explained how Molly had come to work at the house, and she confessed that little Sal read young Bill’s picture books and spent many happy hours playing with those toys which Emma herself had bought for her beloved son. Nelly left nothing out, and at the end of it all, she felt greatly relieved and hopeful that she had done the right thing. ‘I don’t know how, gal, and I’m blessed if I can believe it, but it is possible that Molly might have owned that there gold-piece. There was nobody else admitted to this here room, except me, the servants… and Molly.’ There! It was all off her chest, and she felt better for it.