‘Christ,’ she said, slightly taken aback. ‘I know cypress represents death and despair, but what are these other ones supposed to mean?’

  ‘Wormwood is bitter sorrow and I think marigold is cruelty and jealousy.’

  ‘And the love-lies-bleeding?’

  ‘Hopelessness.’

  ‘God, she’s really gone to town, hasn’t she?’

  ‘But with such tremendous skill. These will have real appeal.’

  ‘Really? Flowers? To rough-as-guts tars?’

  ‘Sailors take their tattoos seriously, lass, you know that, and these are art. No one else’ll be doing the Jolly Roger like this.’

  Friday reached down and poked an itchy bit on her new tattoo. ‘How do you know about what all these flowers mean, anyway?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, what I hear sitting on this stool. Folk talk about anything and everything. That’s why I think Harrie should start on the needles. It’ll take her out of herself, give her something to think about other than whatever that cove Downey has or hasn’t done.’

  ‘You don’t like James, do you?’

  ‘I’ve never met him.’

  ‘You don’t, though, do you?’

  Leo sat down again and picked up his brush and needles. ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?

  ‘If he fancies Harrie as much as you say he does, why doesn’t he just marry her? What’s stopping him?’

  ‘Silly bloody Harrie is.’

  ‘Is she? Why?’

  ‘Have you got all day?’

  ‘Give us the abridged version.’

  Friday tried to think of the best way of describing to Leo, without letting any cats out of bags, everything that had contributed to Harrie’s loss of faith in herself, and couldn’t, except for saying, ‘She thinks she’s not worthy of him. Though naturally she doesn’t want anyone else to have him, because she loves him.’

  ‘Not worthy? Just because she’s a convict?’

  ‘No, it’s more than that. And now there’s this business with Rowie.’ Friday looked back at Leo, her eyes hard. ‘The next time I see that two-faced bloody cow I’m going to give her such a dewskitch.’

  ‘Keep still, will you?’ Leo said as he tapped rapidly at Friday’s skin with his needles. ‘So, what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Rowie Harris?’

  ‘No, bugger her. I mean Harrie. She can’t keep going the way she is.’

  ‘Well, if you want her to spend more time here, learning how to tattoo, you’ll have to do some sort of deal with Nora Barrett. She is Harrie’s boss, don’t forget.’

  ‘George Barrett, more like. He’s the coney-catcher in that family. It’s him who’ll be demanding compensation. Nora won’t see a penny.’

  ‘Who signed Harrie’s papers?’

  ‘George. I already pay him a retainer for Harrie’s services.’

  ‘On top of what you pay her for her drawings?’

  Leo nodded, forgetting that Friday couldn’t see him.

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You think a lot of her, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ Leo replied.

  ‘She doesn’t spend any of that money on herself, you know.’

  ‘I know. You told me. She’s got a warm and generous heart, Harrie,’ Leo said. ‘Just a very messed-up head.’

  The last time Friday, Harrie and Sarah had visited the Parramatta Female Factory together, at the end of February just after Sarah and Adam’s wedding, they’d had a very unpleasant argument on the way. Then, as now, Elizabeth Hislop had kindly lent Friday her landau, and Jack Wilton to drive it. It had been summer then and they’d all sweltered in the heat, especially poor Jack, perched outside on the driver’s seat. It was much cooler this time, and the girls were grateful Mrs H had left a pair of woollen rugs folded on the seats. So was Clifford, curled up on the edge of the one Sarah had spread over her legs.

  Usually at least one of them went out to see Janie and the babies every few weeks, but with the Furniss business and everything, their regular pattern of visiting had been disrupted. Feeling guilty because no one had been for ages, they’d included extra treats in the swag they had today.

  An hour into the journey, Friday waved her hand in front of her face. ‘God, Sarah. Was that you?’

  ‘Hardly!’ Sarah replied. ‘It’ll be her.’

  Friday glared at Clifford. ‘What have you been feeding her?’

  ‘It’s not what I feed her. She eats anything. Even carrion.’

  ‘Christ.’ Friday raised the shade on the window, letting in cold but blessedly fresh air. ‘I don’t know why you had to bring her, anyway.’

  ‘Adam won’t look after her by himself. He says she gangs up on him.’

  ‘How can one dog gang up on someone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could you draw the shade again, please?’ Harrie asked. ‘I’m cold.’

  An hour later Sarah asked Harrie if she was feeling all right. ‘Is it Clifford? Do I need to put her outside with Jack?’

  ‘No, it’s not her.’

  ‘You look very pale.’

  ‘It’s the carriage,’ Harrie said. ‘It’s rocking a lot.’

  Shortly after that she lunged wildly for the door, thrust it open and vomited. Friday grabbed the back of her skirt so she wouldn’t tumble out onto the road while Sarah hastily knocked on the wall to alert Jack. The carriage stopped and they heard him jump down, then swear as he almost stepped in a puddle of spew.

  ‘She’s sea-sick,’ Friday explained as she helped Harrie out of the landau.

  Inspecting the door for traces of vomit, Jack said, ‘We’re not at bloody sea.’

  ‘Funny, you weren’t sick last time.’ Sarah climbed down after them. ‘What’s happened to your cast-iron stomach?’ Clifford bounced out of the carriage behind her and trotted off, head down, happily following the long trail of sick.

  Wiping her mouth on her handkerchief, Harrie shook her head. ‘I must have eaten something. Do we have anything to drink? My mouth tastes awful.’

  ‘There’s Janie’s stout,’ Friday suggested.

  ‘That’s for her breastfeeding,’ Sarah said.

  ‘We’ve a dozen bottles. One less won’t go amiss.’

  ‘I don’t drink stout,’ Harrie said. ‘It’s alcoholic. You know I don’t drink.’

  ‘It’s that or gin,’ Friday said.

  Harrie made a face. ‘The stout, then.’

  ‘You’re not going to do it again, are you?’ Jack asked. ‘Mrs H’ll have me balls if you spew in her carriage.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Perhaps I should eat something, just in case.’

  Friday climbed back into the landau and rummaged around in various bags until she found a bottle of stout and a fresh bap. She pulled the cork out of the bottle with her teeth and handed the bottle down to Harrie.

  She took a few cautious sips — the stout was very strong but was better than the taste of sick — and swished it around in her mouth then spat it out. She upended the bottle to tip out the rest but Friday snatched it off her.

  ‘Oi! That’s perfectly good beer! Swap you for this.’

  Harrie exchanged the stout for the bap and they all got back into the carriage.

  Jack held the door. ‘All set? Are we off again?’

  ‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Where’s Clifford?’

  Friday laughed. ‘Quick, let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t be so mean,’ Sarah said.

  ‘You actually like her!’ Friday was amazed.

  ‘I do, sort of.’

  ‘She’s all we’ve got left of Walter,’ Harrie reminded her.

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’ Friday leant past Jack out the carriage door, put two fingers to her mouth and gave an ear-piercing whistle.

  Seconds later Clifford appeared from the bushes at the side of the road, twigs stuck in her hair, bounded up the carriage step and collapsed on the seat, panting.

  ‘Remember,’ Jack said to Harrie, ‘if you’re going to heave again, for Christ’s sake, bang on the wall.’

  Harrie knew she wouldn’t be sick a third time today — there was very little left inside her to throw up. As the carriage started off again, she nibbled the edge of the bap, trying not to catch the eye of either Sarah or Friday.

  Friday took a swig of stout, then grinned. ‘If you weren’t so prim and proper, I’d be wondering if you were knapped.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ Sarah said. ‘She’s obviously eaten something that hasn’t agreed with her.’

  Harrie kept her eyes on her bap.

  The rest of the journey out to Parramatta passed uneventfully. Jack dropped them off outside the Factory’s high wooden gates, then drove into town to the nearest pub to refresh the horses and himself.

  Friday banged on the wicket until the porter grumpily let them in.

  ‘Got any contraband?’ he demanded, eyeing the baskets and clinking bags hanging off them.

  ‘No,’ Friday replied.

  ‘Prove it.’

  Sarah handed the man a folded one-pound note.

  ‘You can’t bring that in,’ he said, nodding down at Clifford. Clifford bared her teeth and growled. ‘No beasts allowed.’

  Sarah gave him another half-sovereign. The porter pocketed the money and went back to his little sentry box, whistling. They trudged across the beaten, hard-packed ground to the second set of gates in the inner wall, this pair smaller but just as firmly closed.

  Friday shouted, ‘Glad, it’s us! Are you there?’

  A rattle, then, ‘Hold on!’ A door in the gate swung open, revealing a middle-aged woman in the Factory Sunday uniform, her greying hair tied back under a non-regulation, bright red headscarf. ‘Mornin’, girls. Haven’t seen yous for a while. Been busy?’

  ‘We have and we feel like right shites,’ Friday replied as she stepped through.

  ‘Morning, Gladys,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Hello, Gladys,’ Harrie echoed.

  Gladys spotted Clifford and stepped smartly backwards, clamping her skirts around her skinny calves. Then she let out an amused cackle. ‘Bloody hell, I thought it were a giant rat for a minute! Whose is it?’

  ‘She’s mine,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Hope you didn’t pay for it,’ Gladys said.

  ‘I inherited her.’

  Friday handed Gladys her usual block of tobacco for turning a blind eye to their contraband.

  ‘Thanks, love. You’re looking a bit peaky,’ Gladys said to Harrie. ‘Poorly, are yis?’

  ‘Not really. My stomach’s feeling a little delicate.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not come in here, then. Everyone’s got the shits.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Sarah said, alarmed.

  Gladys sniffed her tobacco appreciatively. ‘Well, nearly. I’ll tell Janie yous are here. The visitin’ room’s empty.’

  As Gladys scuffed off across the yard in too-big clogs, avoiding puddles left by recent rain, Friday warned, ‘Hang on, there’s Mrs Gordon and Dick the Bitch.’

  They squeezed themselves and their bags of forbidden swag into Gladys’s cupboard-sized gatehouse as Ann Gordon, matron of Parramatta Female Factory, and her unpleasant assistant, Mrs Letitia Dick, crossed the yard and disappeared into Mrs Gordon’s quarters.

  ‘You’re on my foot,’ Sarah said to Friday.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Have they gone?’ Harrie asked, her nose pressed into Friday’s sweaty armpit. She was feeling queasy again.

  ‘Yep. Let’s go.’

  The visitors’ room was as bare and unappealing as it had ever been. They sat down to wait. Janie Braine arrived a few minutes later, a toddler parked on each child-bearing hip. Friday pulled out a chair for her but even before she’d eased herself onto it, Harrie had grabbed Charlotte off her and was cuddling the little girl, kissing her grubby face and smoothing her silver-blonde hair. She was walking and talking now and beginning to look noticeably like Rachel, except for the mahogany-brown eyes she’d inherited from Gabriel Keegan. Rachel’s had been a startling cornflower blue.

  ‘Hawwie!’ she said, which apparently was how you pronounced ‘Harrie’ when you were eighteen months old.

  ‘What a clever little girl you are!’ Harrie exclaimed. ‘And so pretty!’

  ‘And me!’ announced Rosie, now just over two years old.

  ‘Yes, sweetie, you’re gorgeous, too,’ Harrie agreed, leaning over to tweak Rosie’s plump cheek.

  Rosie wasn’t pretty, but she was extremely sweet and she was cheerful.

  ‘Say hello to your aunties,’ Janie said, passing Rosie around for kisses.

  ‘Have they been well?’ Friday asked. ‘Glad said everyone’s had the shits.’

  ‘Lots have. The bloody flux, the doctor reckons. We been all right. I had a bit of a loose guts a week or so ago, but I come right. There’s some been pretty sick, but, and we’ve had a few deaths.’

  ‘Is Sharpe still the doctor here?’ Sarah asked.

  Janie nodded.

  ‘Quack,’ Friday said.

  Janie asked, ‘Whose dog is that outside?’

  ‘Mine,’ Sarah replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Bad-tempered little bugger. Had a go at Pearl as we come in. Growled its bloody head off.’

  Sarah went to the room’s single window. From it, she could see Janie’s minder Pearl standing in the yard smoking her pipe, but she couldn’t see Clifford. ‘Where is she? The dog, I mean?’

  ‘Lying just outside the door.’

  ‘She can be quite protective,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I thought it were bloody rabid. Rosie wanted to pat it and I daren’t let her.’

  Friday began to empty the bags and baskets onto the table. ‘We’ve brought you loads of nice things. I’m sorry we haven’t been for ages, Janie. There’s just been so much to do with, well, with this business with Adam and everything.’

  Friday, Harrie and Sarah had decided from the outset not to tell Janie they were being blackmailed by Bella Shand. There was nothing to be gained; she would only feel guilty about them having to finance that as well supporting her and the babies, including Pearl’s fee as Janie’s minder. Theft was rife in the Factory and Janie, in possession of the food, alcohol, tobacco and other tempting comforts they smuggled in to her, was a prime target. Janie was a tough girl and perfectly able to look after herself, but not while also caring for two small children. They’d also decided not to mention today that the Charlotte fund was running low. What Janie wasn’t aware of, she couldn’t worry about.

  Janie waved her off. ‘Don’t worry about it. We been fine.’

  ‘I didn’t know if you needed more clouts but I made you some,’ Harrie said.

  ‘Rosie’s out of them now, but Charlotte’s still not quite got the hang of the pot,’ Janie said. ‘Not at night time, anyway.’

  ‘And I hemmed you a few cloths for, you know, your courses,’ Harrie added. ‘For when you start again.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Thanks, love. I have had a show or two. That reminds me, next time can you be a sweetie and bring me a new shift? Just something plain. I’ve only got the one and it’s knackered. I’ve mended it till there’s more patches than anything else and that bugger Tuckwell in the store won’t give me a new one.’

  Harrie nodded, thinking she’d make Janie two. With extra lace.

  ‘And we got you some stout, for your milk,’ Sarah said. ‘Or have you finished with all that now?’

  ‘No, Charlotte’s feeding fairly regular and Rosie still has the odd nurse. It’s better than the shite they get fed here.’

  ‘God, girl,’ Friday said, ‘your tits’ll be round your knees. Harrie, are you going to share that baby, or hog her all day?’

  Harrie passed Charlotte across to Friday.

  Janie laughed. ‘They were round me knees after I had me second one, never mind nursing these two.’

  ‘And I’ve made the girls some more little gowns, and a bonnet each,’ Harrie said, unfolding the clothing from her basket. ‘They grow so fast at this age.’

  ‘Oh, them’re lovely! Thanks, Harrie.’

  Then out came the pots of preserved food, and dried fruit, biscuits, smoked sausage, cheese, sweets, soap, various ointments, a bottle of laudanum, trinkets for bartering, three blocks of tobacco, matches, and three bottles of gin for Janie. Also placed on the table was a cloth purse containing money to pay Pearl, and for bribes so Janie could keep her contraband.

  Her eyes lit up. ‘Oooh, lovely! Look at all that food! You’re spoiling us.’

  ‘Well, if you’re healthy you’re less likely to get sick,’ Sarah said, distracting Rosie, whose little fingers were pulling at one of her earrings.

  ‘How’s Adam?’ Janie asked. ‘Settled down again all right?’

  ‘More or less. He was very thin when he came home and he’s had a bit of trouble putting the weight back on, but the doctor gave him some powders the other day, so that might help.’

  ‘What sort of powders?’

  ‘An anti-infestation emetic. Said he might have some sort of creatures living in his intestines.’

  ‘That’s romantic,’ Friday said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Sarah agreed. ‘He’s been in and out of the privy since he started taking them.’

  ‘What about his mood?’ Janie asked. ‘No hard feelings about being set up by that Gellar cove?’

  ‘Well, yes, plenty of those. But with Gellar dead there’s not much he can do about it.’

  Janie nodded; she knew all about that, Harrie having written and told her. ‘So will yous be getting back into the burglary business?’

  ‘Not for now. We think it’s probably sensible to stay on the straight and narrow for a while. Even though Gellar confessed to framing Adam and his conviction was quashed, shite sticks, doesn’t it? Best to lie low.’

  ‘It must be nice to have him back,’ Janie said.

  ‘It is, it’s lovely.’

  Janie raised her eyebrows at Harrie. ‘And what about your Dr Downey? How’s it going with him?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Harrie said flatly.