Episode 4
Hester takes the remaining girls to church, as a display of normality. She leaves the young orphan, Sara, behind, as punishment for ongoing defiance. When a malign intruder breaks in, Miranda’s impaled young soldier, Sara locates the headmistress’s Enfield revolver and shoots at him. The Sergeant is galvanized. Why does an upper-class English lady own a highwayman’s pistol? Sara tries to warn him that Mrs Hester Appleyard is not what she seems, but he dismisses the child as a fantasist.
An ongoing series of flashbacks have been telling the story of the missing girls, in the months leading up to the picnic. Their dawning fear of what the future holds for young women. Their growing sense of the erotic. Of their unbridled power. We’ve watched the volatile, competitive friendship between Miranda and Irma. Now we discover there was an unconsummated romance between Marion and the missing governess, Miss Greta McCraw.
Meanwhile, aftershocks from the disappearance continue to disrupt the old order. Students are withdrawn by worried parents. Irma’s influential father arranges for a Scotland Yard detective to sail out to the colonies, to investigate. The publicity has focussed attention on Hester – now the marble mason Tomasetti pays her a menacing visit and clearly they share a history. Mike rejects his family’s conservative demands and invites Albert to explore Australia with him, perhaps to pay a visit to Miranda’s family in Queensland, however, fearing they would not be equals, Albert declines. When Albert receives a generous reward for his role in saving Irma, he immediately starts searching for the sister he left behind in a local orphanage. He has no idea how close she is – a pupil at Appleyard College, but when he is told that her guardian would take some time to contact, Albert writes to Mike to accept his offer to travel together. Meanwhile, Sara has become the focus of Hester’s fear and paranoia. Wise beyond her years, all-seeing, all-knowing. When Albert visits the college to seek help in writing a letter to Mike, Sara sights him from afar, and is overjoyed to learn that her beloved brother is coachman at nearby Lake View. Later, Sara tries to run away, only to be forcibly detained by brutal hands at the college gates. We must fear for Sara’s safety.