That got me as far as the McElhone Stairs, where, halfway up, I stood and cried. Flo, my Flo! Angel! How am I ever going to get you home again?

I was still crying when I let myself in the door, where even through the grey wall of tears I could see how much the scribbles have faded. She’s going away from me, I’ll have to sit on the sidelines of her institutionalised life, breaking my heart because I can’t spend all day every day there with her. I’m young, poor and unmarried. I have to work. I have to go tomorrow and apologise to Sister Agatha. God rot you, Mrs. Duncan Forsythe, with your spiteful barbs. You’re in the process of ruining more lives than your spineless mug of a husband’s.

I threw myself onto my bed and howled myself to sleep, woke up after dark. 17d’s windows glowed iridescent mauve, the usual chatter and laughter floated down, and one screaming fight between Prudence and Constance, who never can get on together. Good luck to you, ladies, I thought as I dealt with my indignant cat. There are worse ways to make a better living. A lot worse ways, Mrs. Bloody Duncan Parasite Forsythe.

Well, it will have to be the kidnap, a flight to somewhere like the Northern Territory, where men are men and women are in short supply. A terrible wrench. I can’t even tell Mum and Dad what I’m planning, nor contact them after I find a place to live. Flo and I must disappear off the map. Tell one person a secret, and it’s no longer a secret. I’ll have to empty my bank account in cash, hide it in a bag under Flo’s pinny. Drab clothes. We’ll have to look as if we’re on the breadline. Flo’s own stuff is perfect, but I’ll have to rat around in the cast-offs at the Salvos or St. Vincent de Or—joke, hur-hur-hur. Yes, I can do it. Why? Because I’m smart enough to keep track of all the threads in a tissue of lies. My husband deserted me—that’s a good, standard story. Australia’s chocka with deserted wives. Buy wedding ring. My poor wee daughter misses her daddy so much that she won’t talk. No, that doesn’t sound right—why would she miss a bastard who did the dirty on her mum? She doesn’t talk because a bit of her brain went wrong after her daddy hit her in a drunken rage. Yes, that sounds convincing. Marceline! My poor old boy had trusted me with his angel—how can I let him down? But I have to—cats don’t travel. Or do they? If Marceline has her canvas shopping bag, maybe she will travel. I’ll do a dummy run to the Blue Mountains with her. If she copes with that, then I’ll take both my angels to the Outback.

…This is written later, much later. It must have been nearly midnight when I stopped pacing up and down, plotting and scheming, working out the logistics. I hadn’t eaten, but I wasn’t hungry. Didn’t feel like coffee or tea, didn’t feel like a snort of the old three-star. Felt like something Marceline sicked up, actually. At least I don’t have to worry any more about Harold and my diaries. The old ones are back in the Tilsiter cupboard.

As I went to the table the Glass caught my eye—well, it’s the most eye-catching thing in the whole room. Sitting in its usual spot, glowing pinkly. Fraud of a thing. Oozing drama. I was debating whether to scry before I went to bed, instead of after the old girl wakes me up with the nightly gallop and guffaw. Maybe if I did that, the Glass would work for me? Bugger it, no! I sat down with a flop and vowed that never again would I abase myself before a hunk of silicon dioxide. Plain old melted sand.

So I sat there and thought about how horrible everybody had been to me today. Worse by far, they’d been terminally horrible to Flo. And all angry-horrible, not flat-and-depressed horrible. Angry-horrible’s unbearable without a head to wallop or some balls to knee. Don’t think those awful Child Welfare females don’t have balls. They do, and just as big as any other species of rat.

I looked at the Glass, and a weird thought popped into my mind. What is the matter with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz? If that’s her upstairs every night, then she’s still haunting the earthly plane. In which case, why is she letting them kill her angel? Why has she left such a mess behind? She must have known that she was leaving a mess behind! Therefore she must also have left an answer. She was very stupid about some things, but she was also very clever. Only two clues given to me: that the fate of The House is in the Glass; that it depends on the Glass. Would she have believed in herself and her powers so ardently that she assumed I’d see everything revealed in the Glass? She put my hands on it, sort of blessed me. But I can’t see a thing in the Glass! I’ve been trying for a month, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I glared at the thing fiercely, at its dreamy pink upside-down rendition of my room. The fate of The House is in the Glass. It all depends on the Glass. I grabbed it and did the unspeakable, freed it from its base by lifting it in both my hands. When I put it down, it started to roll. I steadied it. No vibrations, no peculiar electrical thrills. It’s just a very heavy blob of pressure-liquefied silica. The table evidently sloped toward the side away from me, so I shoved the butter dish behind my nemesis and halted it, transferred my gaze to its base. The small circle of padding between it and the black wood isn’t silk, it’s velvet, the pile squashed and shined by the weight of the Glass itself.

Oh, Harriet Purcell, you drongo! How could you be so thick? The answer has been sitting here for four months!

I lifted the base and began to pick at the fabric where it overlapped the wood in a tiny roll, freeing it a weeny bit at a time because the glue was very efficient. But the glue didn’t go under the ball, it only held the edges down. And there, beneath the velvet, was a folded piece of paper resting in a shallow cavity that she must have gouged for it with a chisel. A cheap, printed will form of the kind one buys from a newsagency or a stationer’s. Diabolical. The time she must have spent devising this final riddle, taking a punt on her whole world, including her angel. She didn’t even hedge her bets, she put it all on the nose. My nose for a mystery, a puzzle. She wasn’t even fair about the two clues. The fate of The House wasn’t in the Glass, it was under the Glass. One tiny little word. If she’d used the correct preposition, I would have found the will in a day, maybe less. But no, not her. That was too simple, too tame.

The will wasn’t very long. It said that all her goods and properties and moneys were bequeathed to Flo Schwartz, her only child, to be held in trust during Flo’s minority by her dear friend Miss Harriet Purcell of the same address, who was at liberty to dispose of all income as she wished. And that she consigned the care and custody of Flo Schwartz, her only child, to the said Miss Harriet Purcell, being of the opinion that the said Miss Harriet Purcell would rear Flo as she would want. It was signed Harriet Purcell Delvecchio Schwartz, and there were two witnesses. An Otto Werner and a Fritz Werner, neither of whom I knew from a bar of soap. Brothers? Father and son?

Harriet Purcell! Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had been born a Harriet Purcell. The missing generation. But if from Dad’s lot, then he wasn’t told about her. That’s possible, if from her birth she looked wrong. Nineteenth century parents were very odd about offspring who looked wrong—would bundle them away to a home, hide them as if a disgrace. It’s highly possible that she’s a close relative—Dad’s sister? He was born in 1882, and she would have been born around 1905. Or what if she’d been born around 1902, while Dad was in South Africa fighting in the Boer War? Dad has twin sisters born later than he, in 1900—a great embarrassment, he always says, laughing. What if, after Auntie Ida and Auntie Joan, there was another daughter? Who looked wrong, and was hidden away? This is one mystery I’d be willing to bet will never be solved, though it does answer the riddle of why she was called by the family curse name. An onion, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Layer upon layer, and at the core, a childhood she never mentioned to any of us in The House, even Pappy.