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you won’t tell.”
    â€œOf course I won’t. But you mustn’t do this. Anyway, you can’t get there. You’d have to go with the smugglers across the Spencer Gulf. You’ve got no one to go with you. You can’t go without a chaperone.”
    â€œI know. I’m going to bed now.”
    â€œPromise you’re not going?”
    Clara shook her head. “Not now. I’m going to bed.”
    The next predawn “day” Clara spent being cloyingly sweet—which Mrs. Darlington seemed to adore—and doing some careful investigation. And at about eight in the morning, she said she had a headache and would like to lie down.
    â€œShall I get dear Dr. Leaming to come and have a look at you?” asked an anxious Mrs. Darlington.
    â€œNo. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night, worrying about my mother.”
    â€œYou poor dear. You should have a little lie-down. And Linda’s such a little bagpipe, I should think you need a rest.”
    Clara smiled at her new friend, and then at Linda’s mother, feeling like a complete fraud to both of them. “Thank you. Linda’s been so nice. But…I’m tired. I don’t think I will get up for tea, if you don’t mind.”
    â€œMy dear, you have to eat!” said the plump Mrs. Darlington, who lived for her food—especially macaroons.
    â€œI’ll be fine. I just need a good sleep.”
    That at least was true, even if it wouldn’t be happening. Ten minutes later Clara had slipped out of the window and boarded the trolley-bus to North Central Station. The man at the ticket office didn’t even question her buying a ticket to Mandynonga, where the farms fed by the drip-irrigators with desalinated water grew the expensive food. It was a common enough destination. It was also where the food for the power stations on the Northern Sheba line, which Tim was working on, was loaded. Clara had to smile wryly to herself. It was quite possible that she’d beat her letter up there.
    It was also sure that people would ask awkward questions about her traveling alone all that way. So she’d better have a story. She already had a kitchen knife from Mrs. Darlington’s cutlery drawer, in case of any more unwelcome attentions.
    The Mandynonga line was still above ground, and Clara got her first look at the Westralian countryside outside the sand walls of Ceduna.
    It was not quite as bleak as she’d expected. There were plants: a few scrubby, spiky, odd-leafed trees in little coppice-like clusters; yellow patches of grass…and something that hopped away from the train. In spite of her anxiety and all the things on her mind, Clara couldn’t help but be delighted at her first sight of a kangaroo outside the pages of books. But the trip made Clara realize two things about Australia. It was flat, and there was a lot of it. She knew it wasn’t all flat, of course. But the broadness of the horizon and the searing blue sky made her feel very small.
    The chaos of Mandynonga station and the termite run workers getting off their odd-shaped carriages made her feel lost, too. But she hadn’t got this far to be put off. There were glum-looking groups of men getting on the curious white, flattened carriages, swinging their bedrolls and bags aboard, as well as the raucously cheery ones getting off. Clara studied the train, and the first thing she realized was that it wasn’t really a train. It hung from an overhead rail.
    There was no locomotive. Maybe that would come later…
    A whistle blew.
    â€œDeparture five minutes. All passengers and freight for the Alice and Diamantia Line, last call. Embark or load now or we leave without you!” bellowed a florid faced man in blue dungarees and a little frogged waistcoat.
    Clara wasn’t even sure how to get a ticket, let alone if this was the right train. But that horrible drunken man had said something about Diamantia.