—

Now the last hurdle was over.

Otis had offered their papers and they had been accepted – Mr and Mrs John Hewetson of Dublin returning home after a death-bed visit to Mr Hewetson’s father. Mrs Hewetson, with her lilting Dublin accent, understandably did most of the talking. She could probably be quite pretty under the dowdy coat and hand-made scarf that added to her plump and bulky appearance, but her severe mouth and scraped-back hair stuffed untidily under an unfashionable hat put off anyone with half a mind to have a bit of a crack to liven things up whilst they waited. A lonely pair, with no one to wave them off. Other people passed remarks to one another, or nodded a response to some friend or relative on the quayside. No one expected the tall man and his wife in mourning to do anything but sit and comfort one another in their grief. They were left alone.

The smell of engine oil caused her to feel queasy.

A tall, stooped Mr John Hewetson, nervously guarding his various rush and cloth bags saw the gap between himself and the quayside widen, and felt the vessel shudder as the engine churned and turned her prow seaward. For a moment he dared a look into his wife’s eyes. One day, he hoped, he would find there the response he sought.

She, looking inward, saw this journey as the first step in a much longer journey that was going to take her far.

Quietly she said, ‘We shall be all right now, Jack.’

He took her hand and looked down at the wedding band that Danny Turner had provided and which in her own rooms she had jammed upon her own finger as a final defiant gesture that she was still her own woman. Still Otis Hewetson.