‘SO Mary Connell is your friend?’ said the doctor. ‘If you were a good friend, you’d have reported her condition weeks ago. How long has she been ill?’

‘I’m not sure, sir,’ said Nellie, twisting her damp shawl in her hands. It had taken them so long to walk to the Hindley Street Infirmary, Nellie supporting Mary all the way. Now they were here, it seemed hardly worth the effort. The place smelled of disinfectant and human sweat and misery. It reminded Nellie of the Killarney workhouse where she and Mary had lived back in Ireland. She didn’t like the doctor, either. His voice was cold and precise, like Mr Lefroy’s, and he touched Mary’s thin back with the tips of his fingers as if she was dirty.

‘Coughs up blood, does she?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’ Nellie turned towards Mary. ‘Angel, you haven’t been spitting blood, have you?’

‘Just a little, Nell,’ Mary whispered, shamefaced. ‘I didn’t want to bother you.’

Nellie went cold with shock. This was worse than she’d feared. ‘As if you could bother me! I’d have done something. I’d have asked Trotty to find someone who could help –’

‘It’s rather late for that now,’ the doctor said. ‘Miss Connell is suffering from tuberculosis, a very serious disease of the lungs. It’s clear that in her poor condition she will be unable to work, so we shall have to keep her here for a while. I suppose there’s nowhere else she can go? She has no family?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No friends?’

‘Just me, sir.’ Nellie grasped Mary’s hand. ‘But I’ll do anything I can for her.’

The doctor smiled thinly. ‘Can you give her a home? A warm bed? Nourishing food?’

Nellie shook her head.

‘So how do you propose to look after her? Do you have any money?’

‘Just my last wages, sir. Mary has her wages too. The mistress said it was what was due to us, but it didn’t seem like very much.’

‘You were almost certainly underpaid, then,’ the doctor said. He added, as if to himself, ‘It’s a crime, the way these ignorant Irish girls are taken advantage of.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Nellie. Perhaps this man wasn’t so bad after all. ‘But we were already in trouble with the mistress, so I didn’t say anything.’

‘Very well,’ said the doctor. ‘I shall put down Mr Lang’s name as the person responsible for Miss Connell’s admission, and your name as her family contact. Would that be correct?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Nellie said again.

‘How old are you, Miss O’Neill?’

‘Fourteen, sir.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look it.’

‘I’m sure, sir. I turned fourteen in August, while I was travelling here on the ship.’ But Nellie knew that in fact she had turned twelve, and beneath her shawl she crossed her fingers to show the blessed saints she was sorry for the lie.

‘Are you working?’

‘Not at present, sir, but I know I’ll find a job before long. I have plenty of experience now, a lot more than I ever had at the workhouse – and the Thompsons, that is, Mrs Thompson who had the boarding house, the one that burned down, said I was the best kitchen maid she’d ever had –’

‘I ask because conditions in this Infirmary are very – ah – basic. Miss Connell can be made more comfortable, but only if she can pay for it. Otherwise she will be treated as destitute. That is, a person with no means of support.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you understand me?’

Nellie felt a chill run down her spine. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

‘This is a dreadful place altogether,’ whispered Nellie. ‘How can I leave you here, angel?’

The Infirmary was divided into three wards, two of them for male patients and one for women. Nellie now stood at the entrance to the women’s section, with the doctor on one side of her and Mary on the other.

The look and smell of the ward were shocking even to somebody used to living in a workhouse. At least the workhouse had been kept fairly clean, its floors scrubbed regularly, its walls whitewashed. This place was filthy. Rainwater leaked through holes in the roof and dripped into buckets and bowls set on the floor. The walls were grey and crumbling, splotched with mould.

The iron beds lined up on each side of the ward were only inches apart. Some of the patients were in bed; others were huddled in groups at the end of the room. Nellie saw an ancient, bent woman smoking a small black pipe, some skinny children aged no more than five or six, and several middle-aged women. She could hear moaning, as if someone was in pain. The moaning rose suddenly to a shriek, making Nellie jump.

The doctor stopped beside one of the beds. ‘This will be your place, Miss Connell,’ he said.

Mary nodded, but Nellie looked at the bed in disbelief. There was no pillow, just a thin, stained mattress and one dirty cotton quilt, much used and quite flat.

‘Can she have a blanket, sir? Sure, she’ll die of cold with just this poor little quilt over her.’

‘Pillows and blankets are an extra cost, I’m afraid,’ said the doctor.

Nellie took some coins from her pocket and handed them to him. ‘Please get her whatever is needed,’ she said. ‘I can give you more once I’m in work.’

‘She will be treated as well as possible,’ said the doctor, putting the money in his pocket. ‘I can arrange for her to have extra milk, and a warm blanket, and medicine.’ He put a hand briefly on Nellie’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about her.’

Nellie caught at his arm as he turned to go. ‘Sir, how long must Mary stay here?’

‘For as long as necessary.’

‘And how long might that be?’

The doctor hesitated. ‘Months, at least.’ He walked away down the ward, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floorboards.

Months. Nellie plonked herself down on the bed, and Mary sat beside her, and for several long moments neither of them said a word.

As soon as the doctor had gone, the old woman with the pipe hobbled over and looked Mary up and down, her sharp eyes curious.

‘Welcome to our fancy lodgings,’ she said. She laughed, blowing out a cloud of smoke, and the laugh turned into a rasping cough which she smothered in her shawl. ‘Whatever ails you, I’ll make it better, which is more’n that quack doctor can do. Pills, potions, poultices – you just ask Lizzie Buckley an’ she’ll deliver. For a fee, you understand.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mary in a faint voice. ‘I’ll remember that, of course.’

‘You don’t look too good, my love. Is it your lungs?’

‘I’m a little tired, that’s all.’

‘That’s what they all say. Next thing you know, they’re pushing up daisies.’

Nellie heard a burst of crazy laughter that made the hair prickle on her arms. A young woman lunged forward, only to be pulled back by two others.

‘That’s Rosie,’ said Lizzie. ‘She’s as mad as a brush, but we have to take her in ’cause there’s nowhere else for her to go.’ She grinned. ‘Lots of the patients end up mad here, so she’s right at home.’

Mary turned away, her lips trembling, and Nellie put an arm around her. ‘Don’t be upset by her, angel,’ she said. ‘The doctor will look after you, I’m sure. I must go back to the Depot now. Maybe Mrs Terrible’s job is still waiting for me. I’ll come back to visit you as soon as I can.’

‘I know you will, Nell.’

‘Be brave now.’

‘Yes.’

But Nellie could barely hear the word, and she left the ward with a heavy heart.

The job had gone, and there were no more employers waiting. Mr Lang was sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. People were no longer keen to employ Irish orphan girls, he said. Too many of them had shown themselves to be unreliable, or lazy, or dirty in their habits.

‘I’m not like that!’ cried Nellie.

‘Maybe not,’ said Mr Lang. ‘But the fact is that there are very few jobs at present. Do you have a place where you can stay?’

Nellie felt as if she were floating. There was nothing to stand on, nothing to hold on to. Desperately she tried to drag her thoughts together. ‘Be strong,’ she told herself. ‘Think! Think!’

What about Li? He might help her. The Chinese laundryman had lost his job with the Lefroys at the same time she and Mary had lost theirs. He lived somewhere in Grenfell Street, in a boarding house with the name of a flower – a lily, was it? Li had always been kind to her, but he was a single man, and Nellie wasn’t sure it would be proper for her to stay with him.

Then there was Susan Trott, the Lefroys’ housemaid. Nellie loved Trotty. But it was impossible for her even to think of going back to that big, forbidding house on East Terrace – not after what had happened there.

The only other person she could think of was Edward Strout, who had been her good friend at Thompson’s Boarding House. Perhaps there might be a corner of his grocery store she could sleep in? Edward was married now, so there’d be nothing wrong in asking him for help.

Oh, why had the Thompsons ever left Adelaide? She needed them so badly! And to think they had offered her a job, too – but in the Burra, which was miles and miles away.

‘Well?’ asked Mr Lang, rather impatiently.

Nellie lifted her chin. ‘I have friends I can stay with,’ she said. And, watched by several curious faces, she picked up her bundle and walked out into the rain again.