“The police and Child Welfare files say that Flo was present in the room when her mother was murdered. After both parties were dead, she remained in that room without attempting to summon help. And she used the blood to finger-paint on the walls,” he said, frowning and shifting in his seat as he stared at me. “You don’t seem at all surprised that Flo defaced the room—why?”

I gazed at him blankly. “Because Flo scribbled,” I said.

“Scribbled?”

Well, well! No doubt because they regarded both house and child as shockingly neglected, Child Welfare hadn’t mentioned the scribbling! They’d missed its significance.

“Flo,” I said, “scribbled all over her mother’s walls. She was allowed to scribble, it was her favourite—almost only—occupation. That’s why Flo and the blood came as no surprise.”

He huffed and got up. “Would you like to see Flo?”

“Would I!”

As we walked down the corridor he deplored the locks on the door to the outside world, the bars on the windows. The new drugs were making such a difference to patient behaviour that security measures weren’t necessary. “But,” he said with a sigh, “general hospital wheels turn very slowly. R.P.A. has abolished its locks, so it’s only a matter of time before Queens does.”

Flo was in her own little room, attended by a nurse who wore not only the badge of her general training, but a psychiatric one as well. My angel was sitting quietly in her cot, so thin and small in her skimpy little hospital gown that I wanted to weep. My horrified eyes took in the heavy canvas bodice buckled over her shoulders and across her back with leather straps. From the bodice to the underside of the cot, stout ropes held her so that she could sit up or lie down easily, but couldn’t get to her feet.

I stood stunned. “Heavy duty restriction harness on Flo?”

Prendergast ignored me, went to the cot and let down its side railing. “Hello, Flo,” he smiled at her. “I have a very special visitor for you.”

The enormous sad eyes stared at me in wonder, then the rosebud mouth broke into a huge smile, and Flo held out both arms to me. I sank onto the mattress, enfolded her in a hug and patted kisses all over her weeny face. Angel, my angel! And she kissed me, stroked me, snuggled against me and looked into my face. Put this in your pipe and smoke it, Dr. Bloody John Bloody Prendergast! No one watching could mistake Flo’s delight in seeing me.

For a long time I was conscious of nothing except the joy of holding her. Then, looking at her properly, I saw the bruises. Flo’s arms and legs were mottled with great blue-black patches.

“She’s been beaten!” I yelled. “Who? Who dared? I’ll have the whole of Child Welfare pilloried!”

“Calm down, Harriet, calm down,” Prendergast said. “Flo did this to herself, here as well as at the child shelter. That’s why she’s tied down. You may not believe it, but this shrimpy little creature tore the calico restriction harness to shreds—not once, but half a dozen times. We had no choice other than to resort to leather and rope.”

“Why?” I asked, still doubting.

“Trying to escape, we think. The moment she’s free, Flo takes off, literally throws herself at the nearest object. I’ve seen her myself, cannoning into the wall time and time again. She doesn’t care how badly she hurts herself. At the child shelter she went through a plate glass window one floor up. That’s why they sent her here. How she didn’t kill herself or break anything, we’ll never know, but she was badly lacerated.” His big, well-shaped hand slid her short gown up a trifle to let me see the neat rows of stitches on the inside of both thighs. “It was either heavy restriction harness or heavy sedation, and we don’t like sedation in here. It’s convenient for the staff, but it masks symptoms and delays diagnosis.”

“Her pubes?” I whispered.

“Stitched too, I’m afraid. We called the plastic surgeons in for a consultation, but they think she’ll be fine as is. Whoever sutured her up in R.P.A. Cas did a brilliant job.”

“R.P.A. Cas, eh? Then Flo was in Yasmar,” I said.

“I didn’t say that, nor will I.”

“Why wasn’t Flo admitted to R.P.A. psych?”

“No bed,” he said simply. “Besides, we’re the premier unit for small children.”

“Anyway,” I said triumphantly, “it all proves one thing. This is Flo’s way of getting what she wants, and she wants me. She was willing to run the risk of dying to find me. That says a lot.”

He eyed me speculatively. “Yes, she certainly wants you. Um, would you persuade her to be less frantic?” he asked.

My lip curled. “Not in a fit, ace!”

“Why, for God’s sake?” he demanded.

“Because I do not choose to. Why should I help you lot soften her up until she’s malleable enough to be sent back to Yasmar? Flo is mine. If her mother could speak, I know she’d say so. That’s why I’m applying for custody,” I said.

“You’re young and single, Miss Purcell. You’ll never get her.”

“So everybody says, but ask me if I care what everybody says. I’ll get Flo.” I smiled at her. “Won’t I, angel?”

Flo closed her eyes, stuck her thumb in her mouth and began to hum her tune through it.

They let me stay with her for half an hour, though Prendergast never let up on me, tried every way he knew to find out what I was hiding. Crafty bugger, he knows there’s a lot more to it than I’ll admit. Fish away, ace, fish away! You won’t crack me. I’m a big old gum tree, her mother said so.

When the secretary emerged from her cubbyhole to unlock the door for me, she handed me a sealed envelope. “Dr. Forsythe asked me to give you this,” she said with total lack of curiosity. Like a patient on chlorpromazine. Well, maybe she is.

The note asked if I’d meet him in the coffee lounge underneath the railway station at Circular Quay at six o’clock. An hour hence. I decided to walk, just dream the miles away in a happy haze. No, I don’t have Flo yet, but at least I know where she is. After this, Child Welfare will know that I’m a force to be reckoned with, hur-hur-hur. Little Florence Schwartz wants me! Even if she’s sent back to a shelter, they won’t be able to keep me away from her. Dr. John Prendergast may be a nosy bastard, but his report is going to say unequivocally that Florence Schwartz is emotionally dependent on a twenty-two-year-old spinster who has to work for a living. Let the grey ghosts wrestle with that one! Ripper-ace.

As I reached the rather dirty gloom underneath the Circular Quay railway station, I realised that all of this had happened on or next to the day that I looked into the Glass. Is that what scrying consists of? Could it be that the scryer doesn’t actually see things, but that the act of focusing all that mental energy into an object with exquisitely arranged molecules has the ability to change events? What a thought!

So when I entered the deserted coffee shop, my mind wasn’t on Duncan. In fact, for a moment I wondered what I was doing there. Then he came around the bulk of the Gaggia machine, gave me a smile of delighted pleasure, and held out my chair for me. The moment I was seated, he picked up my hand and kissed it, gazed at me with so much love in his eyes that I melted. He can do that to me every time. Oh, why is he such a victim of convention?

“It’s a pity,” I said, still fizzing over Flo and the Glass, “that a man can’t cut himself in half. The half of you that the Missus wants, I definitely don’t want, and the half of you that I want, the Missus definitely doesn’t want. But I’ve decided that that is the whole problem with men as far as women are concerned. We only ever want about half a man.”

He wasn’t in the least offended. In fact, he grinned. “It’s wonderful to see you right back on form, my love,” he said tenderly. “If an eighth is all you want, then feel free to start dissecting immediately.”