And Eliza ended up at one of them, the Middlemore Immigration Home in Birmingham.

And when I first started researching Eliza's story, I thought I must go down and look at the children's home.

It was then sort of a youth centre, a community centre.

And so I looked up the address and the first thing that came up when I Googled the address was the notice that it was going to be demolished the following week.

So we literally just strapped the baby in the back of the car and drove down there at kind of dusk to have a look at it before it went.

Yeah.

And that was quite a haunting experience.

But as we chatted in her living room in Inverness about Eliza, it started to snow outside, those big fat flakes, like a snow globe.

I'm standing under the railway arches of Birmingham New Street Station, listening to the residents chatting.

Their soft crew crewing, burbling and bubbling like liquid in a still.

Rock doves.

They rule the roost here in this heavy metal city.

Darkly rainbowed as an oily puddle.

and sticking a feathered horn sign up to the fantasy of birds as dreamy country dwellers.

But we'd love to hear you read it.

The Republic of Motherhood.

I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.

I handed over my clothes and took its uniform, its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan soft as a creature smelling of birth and milk, and I lay down in motherhood's bed, the bed I had made, but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work in the factory of motherhood.

The hell shift, the graveyard shift.

Feeding, cleaning, loving, feeding.

I walked home, heart sore, through pale streets, the coins of motherhood singing in my pockets.

Why do you love it?