The boat train pulled slowly into its designated platform by the side of the ocean dock, and Josephine breathed a sigh of relief, taking more pleasure than she would ever have believed possible from the prospect of leaving the country. The sense of anticipation amongst the passengers had built steadily during the short journey from Waterloo to Southampton, and now that they were within walking distance of the ship that would take them across the Atlantic, some could barely contain their excitement. She wished her own emotions were that simple, but this impatience to get underway had very little to do with the romance of travel or the thrill of America. Whichever way she looked at it, the ticket that she clutched in her hand smacked of running away, but she didn’t care. For the moment, all she longed for was to see Marta again, and to put as much distance as she could between herself and the memories of the last few days.
Her conversations with Archie were sporadic and subdued on the way down, neither of them wanting or needing to make small talk. A sombre mood had fallen across the whole country as months of fear and speculation suddenly became a reality, but not even the outbreak of a new war could eclipse a more personal horror. Her friendship with a police detective meant that she was never far away from the sadness of his job: even when Archie couldn’t talk about a case explicitly, the tragedy of one murder enquiry or another invariably governed his moods and shaped his outlook on the world; this time, for Josephine, the anguish had been closer to home – the abduction of a child in a place she had come to love. Perhaps not surprisingly, she was struggling to come to terms with a gnawing sense of loss and betrayal. ‘I’m glad you came to see me off,’ she said, as Archie lifted her bag down from the luggage rack.
‘So am I.’
They had a shorthand, she and Archie, and she didn’t need to explain that it helped to be with someone who had lived through those events, even if they didn’t discuss them, who understood how tainted and responsible she felt, no matter how irrational that might be. He smiled at her, but whatever he was about to add was lost in a flurry of activity on the train. People began to push towards the doors, eager to get a first glimpse of the ship that had rarely been out of the news since she was launched into the Clyde, five years ago almost to the day, and Josephine and Archie joined them. By now, theQueen Mary’s statistics were legendary – taller than the Eiffel Tower, faster than any ship in her class, bigger than theTitanic – and they allowed themselves to be swept along with the other passengers, caught up in the swell of chatter and expectation. There was a dramatic hush when the liner suddenly came into view, towering above the transit sheds and dwarfing dockside cranes until they looked like something fromGulliver’s Travels. The huge, black bulk of the hull, stretching off into the distance, seemed menacing rather than romantic, and Josephine found it hard to believe that something so colossal could float at all. Once the initial impact had passed, though, she saw beyond the boat’s sheer size to the beauty of her lines and the majesty of her presence, and understood exactly why the nation took such pride in her. Although she was built for an English co
