sitting on her grandmother’s knee, listening enraptured to tales of life at sea. She’d loved gazing at Gran’s wrinkled and powdered face, watching her eyes light up as she told her stories. She could remember the feeling of Gran’s arms wrapped around her, the smell of her perfume and powder, the gentle sound of her voice. But she couldn’t remember much of the detail of Gran’s stories – just vague impressions of her talking about her job as a stewardess on board ocean liners, being run off her feet by spoilt and demanding passengers.
And now here, in her attic, was Gran’s old sea trunk. Harriet sighed. How she’d long to see inside it!
‘Mum?’ Sally was on her knees in front of the trunk, looking closely at it. ‘Thought you said this was locked?’
‘It is.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s just held by a catch that’s a bit stiff. Look.’ Harriet watched as Sally prised open the catch then pushed the lid up with both hands. It made a cracking sound as it rose, as if decades of dirt that had sealed it were being broken, but then it was open, the lid leaning back on its hinges, and the contents of the trunk exposed for the first time in many decades.
Emma Higgins’ earliest memory was of being on board a ship. Well, it was not really a ship, she supposed. It was a ferry, a steamer operating between Southampton and Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. She’d been about four years old, her sister Ruby just a babe in arms and her sister Lily not yet born. She’d been so very excited to be on board a boat, amazed that such a huge thing could float, and astounded at the views from the deck as Southampton faded into the distance and Cowes loomed ever closer.
The family were on the ferry because they were moving to the Isle of Wight, where Emma’s father, George, had secured a job working in a new hotel in the fashionable resort of Sandown. ‘There’ll be a beach for you to play on,’ he’d told Emma, ‘and the sea for you to paddle in. We shall have a wonderful life in Sandown!’ But it was the sea crossing – steaming down Southampton Water and then across the Solent – that had captured little Emma’s imagination. When she looked back on it, she thought that was probably the moment that determined her lifelong fascination with being at sea.
They had lived in Sandown, George working in the hotel and Emma’s mother Amelia taking in sewing, for almost ten years, until George had fallen prey to a gang of ruffians one stormy afternoon when he had been carrying the hotel’s takings to the bank to lodge. They’d beaten him and stolen the money, leaving him lying in a ditch with broken ribs and a smashed skull. He was found some hours later by a passing policeman but did not recover from his injuries. Amelia, on hearing the news, had collapsed and taken to her bed for a week, by which time the rent was due and there was not enough money to pay it.
Emma’s second sea crossing, therefore, was the return trip from Cowes to Southampton, where the now-fatherless family stayed for a while with Amelia’s sister until Amelia felt able to leave her bed, take on work as a laundress and seamstress, and move herself and her daughters into a tiny terraced house near the Southampton docks.
Now, as Emma hurried back to that same terraced house, bursting with her news, she wondered what her mother and sisters would make of what she had to tell them. Would they be pleased? Or fearful? She had no idea. All she knew was that this felt like her destiny. A chance to go to sea again – properly to sea! – and actually live on board a ship. It felt so right. It seemed like a job that had her name on it; a job she’d been meant to do since she was four years old and had marched onto the bridge of the paddle steamer on the way to Cowes, demanding to see the horses that powered the ship. Her father had been simultaneously mortified and delighted by her audacity, she recalled, and the ferry’s skipper had picked her up and let her hold the wheel for one brief, glorious moment.
She turned a corner, passed the small grocery shop where Ma went every day to buy the family’s dinner, waved to the little girl who lived across the street and was playing out with a hoop and stick, and found herself running the last few yards to her front doorstep, where she almost tripped over her sister.
‘What are you doing sitting out here, Ruby? You’ll make your skirts all dirty and Ma’ll be furious.’
‘Huh. I scrubbed the step this morning so it’s clean as anything. Sitting out here because it’s better than being in there.’ Ruby pointed over her shoulder with her thumb at the house.
‘Oh dear. What’s happened now?’ Emma sighed. Her news would have to wait a while. She nudged Ruby with her foot to make her move over, and sat beside her.
‘Ma. That’s what’s happened. Making me scrub steps and wash clothes and sweep floors. I ain’t a general skivvy, Ems.’
‘We need to share out the jobs. Especially when Lily’s ill and Ma needs to nurse her.’
‘Where was you, then? Where was you this afternoon? You could have done your share of the jobs.’ Ruby glared at Emma. ‘I do enough blinking work at the hotel every morning without having to do more when I come back home.’
‘I swept upstairs and did all the grates this morning before I went out. While you were still abed,’ Emma replied. Part of her wanted to be furious at Ruby for suggesting she, Emma, didn’t do her fair share of the chores. But another part felt for her sister. Of course Ruby wanted more from life than to spend her days scrubbing floors. At 17 she deserved fun and happiness and sunshine and laughter. But with their father dead, their mother’s fading eyesight meaning she was struggling to sew her piecework, their little sister Lily’s precarious health requiring her to frequently spend days in bed … well, it was essential that Emma and Ruby have jobs and bring in some money. They’d both worked since leaving school at 14.
‘Yes, I know.’ Ruby leaned against Emma as a gesture of apology, and Emma smiled to show it was accepted. ‘But I wish there were some way out of this. Where’s my knight, riding over the horizon on his glossy black steed, come to sweep me off my feet and take me to his castle to live in luxury?’
Emma laughed. ‘You’ve been reading too many romances, Ruby. Life’s not like that.’
‘I know. I just wants something a bit different. Less scrubbing, more love and laughter with some lovely-looking fellow.’
‘You’re so pretty, Ruby, it’ll happen in time. You’re still young.’
‘Wish it would hurry up and happen.’
‘Ah, pet. Don’t wish your life away. Come on. Let’s go inside and make tea for us all. I have some news to share.’ Emma stood and held out her hand to haul her sister to her feet. Ruby followed her in, looking curious as Emma called for Ma and Lily to come to the kitchen and listen to what she had to say. As she passed through the hallway it dawned on her that her news would mean Ruby would have more work to do at home, as Emma wouldn’t always be there. With a pang of anxiety she wondered how her sister would take the news.
‘There’s a possibility of me getting a new job,’ Emma announced, when Ma, Ruby, and Lily were all sitting at the kitchen table, looking at her expectantly.
‘What, on top of the one you already have, in the Star Hotel?’ Ma looked surprised. Emma already worked six days a week cleaning hotel rooms.
Emma shook her head. ‘Instead of it. I wouldn’t be able to do both – listen while I tell you.’
‘Get on with it, then,’ Ruby said, rolling her eyes.
‘There’s a new ship coming in, next month. A big one. The biggest ever built, they say. It’s sailing down here from Liverpool, and then a week or so later it’s off on its first proper trip – the maiden voyage, they call it.’
‘So what?’ Ruby shrugged.
‘You