She was well ahead of her appointed time so she drove on till she reached the edge of the urban area and found a pub with a beer garden. Here she sat, letting the autumn sun fill her hair with colors to match the changing trees. On impulse she took out her mobile and rang home. It would be late evening there, her parents if not already in bed would be thinking about it, but the desire to hear their familiar voices was strong.

Lu answered.

“Hi, Ma.”

“Sammy! Hi, hon. How’re you doing? Everything OK?”

“Fine. Just felt like a chat. Sorry it’s so late.”

“It’s not late. What do you think we are? Pair of clappedout geriatrics? So how’s it going? You in Cambridge yet, or are you still rubbernecking?”

“Still touring around, getting the feel of the country.”

She felt uncomfortable not being straight with her mother. Eventually she’d come clean with her, but not before hearing what Betty McKillop had to say. Then and only then would she take a decision about what, if anything, to tell her father. Or more likely she’d off-load the decision on to Lu.

“Yeah? And how does it feel?”

“Fine, but not like home.”

“Hope it never feels like that, hon, but give it time and I’m sure you’ll find plenty to like. Hang on. Here’s your pa.”

A pause, then that quiet voice which packed more authority into monosyllables than most politicos and preachers got into a sixty-minute harangue.

“How’s tricks, girl?”

“Fine, Pa. I’m doing fine.”

“Not ready for home yet?”

“Pa, I just got here last week!”

“Yeah? Seems longer. Missing you, girl. Here’s your ma.”

Missing you, girl. The simple statement provoked a longing for home more powerful than any she’d experienced since her departure.

She spoke with her mother a few minutes more, keeping it light and chatty. When they said goodbye and she’d switched off her phone, for a few moments the autumn sun seemed to have lost all its heat and the trees and buildings and people around her faded to a ghostly tableau into which she had somehow strayed.

Then a girl appeared with the sandwich she’d ordered and as she set it down she said, “Hope you don’t mind me asking, but is that hair color natural, ’cos if it’s not, I want to know where I can buy some!”

“Sorry,” said Sam, laughing. “That’s the way it came.”

“Oh well. Just have to get a wig then, won’t I?”

In fact the girl’s hair was a pleasant shade of brown and so fine that the light breeze drifted it across her face in a manner Sam guessed young men would not find unattractive. But she knew from experience that persuading yourself that what you had was in fact OK was not the easiest task a young woman faced.

But the exchange had served to bring her back to where she functioned best, in the here and now. She ate her sandwich, followed it up with a coffee, then killed time strolling along a nearby riverbank and making conversation with the anglers before she headed south once more to Gosforth.

The flat was on the ground floor. She rang the bell and waited. After a moment she saw a figure behind the frosted-glass panel. Then the door was opened by a woman in her fifties, broad in the bust and beam, with henna’d hair and a full fleshy face fraught with enough makeup to launch an amateur production of The Mikado. She looked at Sam, nodded, and said in a strong Australian accent, “I’m Betty McKillop. No need to ask who you are. You got the build, and of course the hair. Lucky girl. Come on in.”

“It’s good of you to see me at a time like this, Mrs. McKillop,” said Sam, following the woman into a sitting room still containing a three-piece suite and a low table but denuded of pictures and ornaments. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“Call me Betty. Yeah, well at least I knew her for a few years. Those bastards told me she was dead, you know. If it hadn’t been for the Trust… angels them people are, angels. I’m surprised they haven’t been able to help you more.”

“To tell the truth, I haven’t really bothered them, Betty,” said Sam, sitting down. “It was just the coincidence of Gracie being the aunt of a friend of mine that got me wondering. And when she mentioned you, and I was coming over here anyway…”

“To Cambridge Uni, you say? Bright girl. Good onya. World needs bright girls. Sorry I can’t offer you a cuppa. Everything’s packed up or junked. Just the furniture to go, and someone’s coming round to clear that out later on. So let’s enjoy the comfort while we can. It’s your show, Sam. What do you want to ask me?”

“That’s easy,” said Sam. “What I want to hear is anything you can tell me about my grandmother, that’s Sam Flood, who sailed to Australia with you. Gracie said you and her were pretty friendly.”

“Yeah, we got that way, as far as it was possible with little Sam.” She hesitated then went on, “You want the lot? Some of it won’t be pleasant, you appreciate that?”

“From what little I know, I’ll be surprised if any of it is,” said Sam.

“Then you won’t be very surprised. OK, where shall I start? The beginning, why not? The journey out.”

She settled back on the sofa, lit a cigarette and began to talk.

All told, the voyage out wasn’t so bad, though there were plenty of bad times. Like being sick. And realizing after a while that we’d gone too far ever to turn round and go back.

But I made new friends, and most of the sailors were kind. And, looking back, and knowing now what was waiting for us after we arrived, those days seem like a pleasure cruise.

For years I could never remember much of this stuff, you know, not even the voyage. Not because I’d properly forgotten but because I reckon I made myself forget. It was like looking back into a dark pit you were trying to climb out of. There were faces in there and little hands clutching and voices calling out in fear and pain, and all that any looking back did was start you sliding down into the pit, and you knew it had no bottom because wherever you’d been before or whoever you’d been before was out of your reach forever…

Sorry. I’ll be all right in a minute. But it’s been hard. I brought up a daughter and she was always asking questions about the way things were when I was a little girl, the way kids do, and that got me looking back into the pit even when I was laughing with her and telling my made-up stories. Then she grew up and got married and gave me a granddaughter and I thought it’s going to be the same again, her curious, me telling stories, but always skirting round the truth because I couldn’t talk about it, not even to my husband, not even to my own child…

I think if I thought anything I thought I must have done something really terrible to deserve such punishment. Yes, that’s it, I felt guilty. Makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I felt guilty! Makes you cry.

Then one day I read in the paper about this Migrant Trust thing that this English woman had started. It was funny. I’d got so used to trying not to think about it because there was no point that it was real hard to start thinking about it again. Suppose it turned out I was right and I deserved what happened to me? But in the end I had to write to the English lady and I got this reply inviting me to go and see her next time she was in Australia, so I went.

There were a lot of other people there waiting and one of them kept looking at me and finally she came over and said, “Aren’t you Betty?” And then I remembered, we’d been on the boat together, and we started crying. Jesus, we must have cried a whole bucketload of tears, and it was like they started washing stuff away, and the more we cried and the more we talked, the more I remembered…

Not being alone was better and it was worse. When I realized just how many of us there’d been – not just one boatload but whole convoys over whole decades – for the first time I began to think maybe I wasn’t so specially bad after all. But then you start to ask, if we weren’t so specially bad, what in the name of God were we doing on those boats? Who decided we should be on them? Where did we all come from?