Molly took the lid off the battered blue biscuit tin she’d found under Adam’s bed. Since Angus died she’d had no energy to clean and the formerly spotless cottage was thick with grime and littered with waste. Mine management always wanted widows out to make room for new workers. On Monday she’d begin her new job as a scullery maid in the Abbott household.
Such work was easily come by. The assortment of servants at Canterbury Downs amounted to a small army, and harsh conditions combined with low pay ensured a swift staff turnover. Molly had a sixteen-hour workday to look forward to and wages of but a pound a month, but with bed and board provided she could still add to her nest egg. But she couldn’t take Scruffy. She’d have to leave him with Adam. The boy had been by twice already, demanding the terrier, saying he’d be better off at Binburra. It grated to admit he was right.
Scruffy whined and Molly bent down to stroke him. What a comfort he’d been, this little dog, in the dark days since Angus died. At night she drew his warm body close, burying her tears in his wiry fur, trying to recapture something of the essence of Angus. She’d lost so much, and now Adam would have the only important thing she had left. Who was Adam anyway? Molly had met Angus’s brother at the memorial service for the drowned miners. He said Angus never even had a nephew.
Adam hadn’t bothered to attend the service. He was too busy recuperating, first as some sort of a hero at the Abbotts’ stately mansion, then at Binburra. Hero? Traitor more like it, Molly seethed, her heart a ball of bitterness and grief. She resented Angus for lying to her. She hated the prospect of losing Scruffy. Worst of all, she blamed Adam for leaving her poor Angus to drown. Something sharp lodged in her throat, making it hard to draw breath. Somehow, someday, he would pay.
The task of cleaning house could be put off no longer. Molly dreaded discarding the bits and pieces of her life, so she’d started in Adam’s room. There was less of Angus there.
Curiously, she examined the contents of the biscuit tin. Letters. Dozens of them, all addressed to My dearest mother in Adam’s distinctive copperplate hand. How extraordinary. According to Angus, Adam’s mother was dead, but if Angus had lied about Adam being his nephew, she wasn’t sure what was true. The lie still hurt.
Molly took the tin into the kitchen and sat down. Reading was a slow and laborious task, but she persevered. Perspiration beaded her forehead. Time slipped away. Hours later she put down the last letter, trying to absorb what she’d learned. That Adam was certainly not Adam. He’d signed the letters Luke. That he’d escaped from gaol. That he bore a bitter hatred for Sir Henry Abbott.
In spite of herself, Molly was moved by these heartfelt letters from a son to his mother. Written, but for some reason not sent. Clearly he loved his family and missed them terribly. Molly understood this – how one could so terribly miss loved ones. Just as she missed her own family, her dead babies, her departed husband . . . just as she missed Angus. That thought hardened her heart. She reinspected the tin.
Beneath a ragged square of linen at the bottom of the tin, she found what she was looking for. A neatly addressed envelope bore the name Mrs Alice Tyler at a Melbourne address. The surname rang a bell. It was the surname of that escaped prisoner, the one Sir Henry had posted such a large reward for, the talk of the whole town for months. Luke Tyler.
None of it made any sense. Why would Angus deceive her, bring an escaped convict and danger into her home? Harbouring a felon was a crime in itself. She lay down on her bed and wept.