She thought no one was looking. It was the middle of the day in a busy supermarket and she reached over the counter. She was 28 years old, seven months pregnant, and off her face.
By the time Linda* went to court her daughter was a few weeks old. She rocked her in her arms and begged not to be sent to jail. She didn't want this baby to end up in foster care like her three other children. Or like her.
Linda is fair, with freckles and long hair past her shoulders. She is slim and plainspoken. At times, she forgets things or becomes defensive. When you ask her a question she answers directly, or if she doesn't want to, she changes the subject. Linda doesn't like to talk about why the children were taken away; instead she focuses on what she is doing to get them back.
Last year, she walked into a branch of family services organisation Berry Street and asked for help. She had come from a share house where she would wake to the owner sexually assaulting her. Pregnant with her fourth child, Linda brought everything she owned with her – a garbage bag full of clothes.
Not long after, on that day in court, the magistrate gave Linda another chance. She was released on a bond. From that moment on, she says, she did everything she could to become a better mother.
Linda's daughter, now aged one, is still in her care. The Department of Health and Human Services has never had to intervene. Linda now also has access to her two eldest daughters, and her son stays with her a couple of days a week, with plans to come home for good.
"I was just really lucky that I had the support of my case worker and Berry Street or I could not have done any of it," says Linda, at home in her two-bedroom flat in Melbourne's northern suburbs. "And I've worked so hard and got myself in a good place mentally and physically. And no drugs, nothing."
Linda remembers when she started stealing as a child. Every morning she would stuff supermarket chocolate bars into her pockets. It wasn't for the thrill; she did it because she was embarrassed to be sent to school without lunch.
At the age of 10, she was removed from her mother by child services. She went into foster care, a girls' home, and then, when she was a teenager, graduated to residential care. By 15, Linda was using heroin. By 17, she had her first baby.
Over the years there have been men who have beaten her and tortured her and worse. Linda survived years of extreme violence from a series of partners who supposedly loved her. Two of the three fathers of her children were jailed. The one who stabbed her in the forehead with a cheap steak knife was locked up for killing a man.
Most of Linda's adult life has been spent under a haze of drugs, alcohol and untreated mental illness. Addiction has driven her to crime and prostitution. She has lived with drug dealers who fed her habit in return for sex.
She has slept on the streets and in holding cells and talks of a time, not long ago, when she felt empty, driven only by her search for the next hit. She is among a handful of women in Victoria whose babies have been taken into the state's care as soon as they were born, sometimes straight from hospital.
To say Linda is turning her life around is an understatement.
She just got her licence and a small car. She works part-time in a bakery. And she is almost finished the methadone program. On the day she met Fairfax Media, Linda was throwing a Christmas party for her children. It was the first time they had all been together.
Linda's demeanour softens when she talks about her kids. She's proud of them, especially how well-behaved they are. She laughs at her baby daughter babbling away at her feet. "This is our safe house," she says. "I don't even really have friends come to the house because it feels like this is just for me and the kids."
Cases like Linda's are rare. Most parents who interact with child services have contact with the department on a single case. The ones who lose multiple children due to abuse and neglect often struggle with many demons.
Then there is the entrenched, generational disadvantage. Parents who have grown up in the child welfare system – parents like Linda – are more likely to have their own children taken into foster care.
Linda's Berry Street case worker said the young mother was committed to changing her life and putting her children's needs first. That includes regular family violence, and drug and alcohol counselling.
"It's definitely been driven by her," she said. "The past year her confidence has increased, and she's a lot more positive because I think she can see a future for her and her children for the first time."
Linda has scrubbed her home clean and filled it with brightly coloured knick-knacks from Kmart. There are photos of the children everywhere and a calendar marking out when she will see them next. She has plans for a vegie garden and recently planted strawberry seedlings in pots on the front doorstep.
She hopes, one day, to study and maybe work with victims of family violence or people who used drugs. It's a long-term goal, but given her resilience and how far she's come in a year, anything is possible.
"Some people think drug addicts are just a piece of shit," says Linda, "but I think everyone just deserves a chance.
"If I didn't get my chance I wouldn't be sitting here with my beautiful baby. And she wouldn't be here with her mother because I'd either be in prison or dead. No doubt about it."
* Not her real name