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It was only later she would wonder how the girl could have known she had a son when no one had told her.
    Miss Grainger was silent, torn between compassion and self-righteousness, between the living and the dead. She had thought much about Edward Howard in her time away from the oppressive house in Parkes. She had esteemed him in a way that was undeserved and she had made herself subservient to both him and his discourteous and spiteful wife. She felt a bitterness growing within her towards the little darkie, and towards Edward Howard, and her tolerance of the abusive eccentricities of Lydia Howard now seemed exhausted. She felt that she had been used, duped into a situation that she should have found demeaning. Her desire that she would wake to find Edward standing over her bed confessing love had vanished into the same darkness in which she had lost so much already.
    Certainly, Edward had made no comments to her that would have led her to believe that he would act in a way that was inappropriate towards her; she had interpreted his distance as confirmation of the strong and immutable values that she had thought he possessed. But, she would also think, he could not be unaware of the way she looked at him, the way she felt, the extra effort she put into everything she did for him. She would, before the developments with the kitchen girl, have been content to have him acknowledge all that she gave to him without expecting anything in return. The awareness that he had longings that she had thought he was above and, even more hurtful to her, that those longings for someone who could not love him as much as she did, sunk her into the most resentful of moods.
    Now, accompanying the little darkie back to the Howard household, Frances looked across into the tear-filled, troubled brown eyes and could only see the enemy, the woman, girl actually, who had come between her and Edward. She could see on the dark face the desolate isolation, the abandonment, but she could not offer a touch or a kind word.
    The only comfort Elizabeth had on the trip back to Parkes was the rocking of the train. At the home where she had waited for the birth, there had been eight other Aboriginal girls. All, like her, had been taken from their families and placed at a house or cattle station to work as servants. They came from many different places — Kempsey, Junee, Forbes, Newcastle. One girl, Joan Morgan, came from Lightning Ridge and by tracing the limbs of their family tree they discovered that they were cousins. Through their mothers, they were both Eualeyai. With Joan, she could talk about people that they both knew, particularly Kooradgie who had joined Joan’s family as often as he had Elizabeth’s. Both remembered his permanent wink and his stories about every animal, every part of the landscape and every thing that hung in the sky. What neither of them spoke about was the circumstances by which they came to be carrying children.
    As the landscape blurred through Elizabeth’s steady gaze, she thought about how much had happened since she was first taken to the Howard house. Mrs Carlyle had been more imposing than Miss Grainger. Mrs Carlyle was pale in expensive dark clothes whereas Miss Grainger was lemon-coloured with her blonde hair and dressed in white cotton. When she had arrived at the Howard house, Elizabeth had thought that Miss Grainger would be kind to her, would offer her friendship and protection. She had worked hard to gain Miss Grainger’s favour, was eager to do all that was asked of her, to get the attention, affection and acceptance that would have made the routine of her life more bearable. There were moments where that connection had seemed to be within reach, but it had never been as forthcoming as Elizabeth had initially hoped and with the pregnancy it seemed to evaporate.
    Many other things had changed with the pregnancy. Before then, Peter would laugh and do thoughtful things for her. He had given her a shell