A nearby shopkeeper realises what’s going on and collars you firmly. As he waits for Molly to catch up, he shakes his head.
‘Tsk tsk. They give you too many chances, you convicts. Your parents’ generation would’ve hanged for half the things you all do – but, no, the judge gives you the chance of a new start. And do you take it? Do you work for your ticket of leave, and make an honest future for yourselves? No! You cheat and swindle and escape and murder. Bloody fools, the lot of you. It’s in your blood, no doubt. You should all be hanged.’
YOU ARE NOT hanged, but you are sentenced to a gaol term in the same dim, freezing cells you were held in when you first arrived.
They search you so thoroughly when you arrive that the bracelet in the hem of your petticoat is found. The wardens won’t believe it isn’t stolen, and it is taken from you. ‘Thief’ is added to your list of crimes.
Your hair is hacked off, leaving only prickly clumps behind. You are put to work, washing and wringing sheets.
You weakly force yourself through each day, collapsing into a short, dreamless sleep each night. Although a doctor comes to treat your ankle, it never heals. It looks bruised and odd, and after months, your walk forms into a twisted hobble.
The other women call you Hop-Along, but you can’t laugh. You can’t make yourself care about anything anymore – all feeling has been burnt out of you, leaving ashes. There are no mirrors here, but sometimes you see your dead-eyed, crooked form looking back at you from a puddle, and you don’t recognise it.
When a bout of pneumonia strikes the prison in wintertime, you have no strength to fight it. Day after day, as you force yourself to work, you feel the coughing and the fever dragging you deeper, chewing you, until you think: Just let it end… I’ve had enough…
You begin to hear voices, and in your feverish haze, you’re not sure if it’s the women in your cell speaking, or the voices of the dead.
‘If you had your life over again, what would you do differently?’
‘Ah, there’s no point in regrets! What’s done is done – you can’t change the past.’
‘It doesn’t do good to dwell on it, I suppose. But I can’t help thinking, if the timing had been different… if the choices had been different… would I be with him now? Or would I always end up here?’
You don’t have the clarity of mind to work anything out. Fever burns through your brain. You think of how drained your ma looked before she died, and you know you’re ready to go and join her. You hope that wherever she is will be a better place than here.
Your cough rattles the last of the strength from your body. You’ve fought for so long that it will be a relief to stop. You welcome death’s quietness, its release. The fever can move on through the gaol, like the hungry fire that it is, looking for more fuel. The voices fade as your breath slows, then ceases.
To return to your last choice and try again, go to scene 21.
Once again, I’ve made the sensible choice, you think a few hours later, rolling your eyes to yourself as you climb up onto the ox-and-cart behind Molly and the master for the long, bum-numbing trip home to Bothwell.
You’re glad not to have parted ways with your bracelet, though. You like to think that it wants to stay with you – as if it has a mind or spirit of its own. You suppose it’s become something of a good-luck charm to you – if you can call a dead mother, a gaol term, and exile to the furthest-flung place in the world ‘good luck’.
You’ve had some strange dreams about the bracelet since you arrived at Bothwell. You’ve dreamt you’re walking away from the house, wearing only your nightie, following the sound of singing: a woman’s voice, in a strange tongue – a keening, bubbly string of words.
In the dream, you are holding your bracelet in your hand, but the colours of the stones are rubbing off on your palm, marking your skin with rainbow streaks. You want to find this singing woman, and show it to her. You think she’ll be able to explain it somehow. But you wander, and wander, and wander, never getting any closer to the source of the singing. Then you wake up.
THE MORNING AFTER your arrival home from your trip to town, you are in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, your head crammed full of thoughts. A fresh breeze wafts into the room, tempting you outside. You haven’t been able to stop thinking about Da.
There’s only a slim chance that Da has been transported to Van Diemen’s Land, and yet having the list read at the police office is the only chance you have of finding out for sure.
You are trying to think up a plan of how you’ll achieve that on your next trip to town … and feeling frustrated with yourself that you didn’t take your chance yesterday … and wishing you were outside … and thinking of that strange dream you had again last night … and in the end, your head gets so full that it forgets where your fingers are, and you slip and slice yourself with the peeling knife.
‘Damn this!’ you say, and you plonk down the slightly bloodied potato and storm outside to take a breath. Molly and Joe are nowhere in sight, and the master is away at another meeting in Bothwell town.
Bruno, the dog, darts past your legs. He is
