He grinned at her, only just visible. ‘I just had a brilliant thought. I’m not allowed to talk to you, and you’re not allowed to talk to me, but there’s no rule that says we can’t talk to ourselves, as long as it’s not a conversation.’

  He looked carefully away from her, out over the rail. ‘I’m twenty-two years old, and was in my second year at Cambridge studying engineering, which means by an accidental bit of good planning the army actually put me in the Engineers. They probably meant to make me a cook but mixed the names up.’

  Jean giggled.

  ‘I’m the younger son. My older brother is the family disgrace — he joined the navy. My family own a steelworks near Bristol. I am a bachelor of clean and sober habits who goes to church on Sunday and never frequents low company, mostly because there’s no chance for anything else in college or in the army.’ He smiled down at her. ‘You can speak to yourself now.’

  She noticed he hadn’t actually said what regiment he was in, or if he’d seen active service, and if he had, where it had been.

  She stared out at the sea, faintly glowing with reflected starlight as it swelled up and down against the pure black of the night, trying to think of a way to make a nothing life seem interesting.

  ‘My name is Jean McLain and I know it almost rhymes. My parents must have been thinking of something else when they named me. My father is headmaster of Butterwood Grammar. I went to the Miss Graham’s Ladies’ Academy until just over a year ago, when I became assistant at the Butterwood post office. I’m twenty-one, though three months ago I was sixteen —’

  ‘You’re the Morse code girl!’ he interrupted. ‘The one who won the competition with fifty-five words a minute.’

  ‘Only fifty-two.’

  ‘Only fifty-two! There are a dozen stations itching to get their hands on you, er, figuratively speaking.’

  ‘I used to have Morse code competitions with my brothers.’

  ‘And you beat them too?’

  ‘They play cricket better than I can,’ she admitted. ‘Sisters have to be good at something.’

  ‘I don’t have a sister, so I don’t know. I say, would you like to come and meet the ship’s radio operator? He happens to be a chum of mine. See how you go with the ship’s —’ Suddenly he stopped, staring at the sea.

  ‘Miss McLain,’ he said in a very different tone, just as the ship turned abruptly. ‘Would you please walk to the port side of the ship then make your way to the stern-most lifeboat? Quickly! I need to alert one of the officers.’

  She stood up obediently, then peered out in the direction he was staring. Something dark bobbed in the water, spiked all over.

  A mine, she thought. The ship almost hit it right by where they were standing.

  But already the mine was further away and behind, bouncing gently in the wash of the ship as the ship headed in the other direction.

  Alan Galbraith relaxed. ‘The officer on watch must have seen it in time. As you were, Miss McLain —’

  The blast hit them with so much noise she could hear nothing, not even when the second torpedo hit, so that she just felt the ship leap — but that wasn’t right: they should be sinking.

  They were sinking, she realised. Already the boat’s stern was under water, even as the bit she and Alan Galbraith were on teetered and reared out of the water, deckchairs sliding downwards. Alan Galbraith grabbed her by the wrists and hauled her out of the chair before she tumbled into the water with it. Suddenly she could hear again: shouts, screams, a siren and then another.

  ‘Women first! Get the women to a lifeboat!’

  The deck shuddered under her feet.

  ‘Can you swim?’ Alan Galbraith shouted.

  ‘Yes!’ she screamed.

  ‘Come on, I’ll help you up onto the rail.’

  ‘But the lifeboats.’

  ‘No time,’ he said grimly. He grabbed her hand this time, tossing her rug away. ‘Take off your shoes. Keep your coat on — the lifebuoy will keep you and it afloat. But swim, as hard as you can, away from the ship, or she’ll drag you down with her.’

  ‘What about you?’ she cried, as she scrambled up onto the rail, his hands supporting her, and she struggled for a foothold in her long skirt.

  ‘I’ll be swimming too.’

  Jean gazed at the blackness of the water for a second. Then she dived.

  Chapter 6

  SOMEWHERE IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL, MAY 1917

  It was colder than she had ever imagined cold to be, and wet and dark and almost impossible to swim with the lifebuoy and her skirts, but she managed arm over arm, frantically, screams and cries all around her and behind her, gradually dying away except for shouts and someone sobbing, far away. She felt the ship as it finally sank, as if it were trying to drag her into the vast silence where once there had been engines.

  She kept on swimming, or at least struggling with the water, refusing to let it drown her as the waves dashed against her face or over her head.

  Time vanished. Now and then people shouted orders in the distance, but gradually they faded. Either she had drifted further away, or they had drowned. She called ‘Alan!’ a few times, but there was no answer. She hadn’t expected one. The world had shrunk to darkness and the cold.

  She struggled on.

  Waves. Water. The cold became pain, then numbness. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep, and let the lifebuoy keep her up, but knew that if she did she would never open them again, never see her family. She would die before she had ever truly lived. She forced herself to glance up at the stars every so often, to see they had moved so she knew time was passing.

  She laboured on. At least the swimming meant the cold could not take her quite as quickly, but the cold was winning now.

  Then she saw it, a yellow arrow in the night. A torchlight, searchlight, but she had no machine to send an SOS. She vaguely realised voice would do.

  ‘Help!’

  It was only after her third cry she realised she might be calling to a German ship, even perhaps the U-boat that had torpedoed them, come to the surface to hunt down survivors.

  The light came closer. A man yelled, ‘Anyone there?’

  ‘I’m here!’ she screamed.

  ‘Blimey, it’s a woman.’

  English, she thought with relief, then let her eyes close as the sound of water slapping on planking grew closer. Something hooked itself onto her lifebuoy, and then at last hands lifted her from the water.

  Chapter 7

  SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND, MAY 1917

  It was an English fishing boat. The radio operator — Alan Galbraith’s chum — must have had time to send out a distress call and the boat had been searching for survivors. She was the only one they’d found, though when she woke up between white sheets in a cottage hospital she vaguely remembered shapes under a tarpaulin on the deck that might have been bodies.

  She had not been injured but was suffering from exposure. She had to stay in hospital until the nurses were sure her fingers and toes all worked and she had feeling in them, and she could walk to the bathroom by herself without wobbling and having to grab a chair or bed end to stop falling over.

  The ward had once been a parlour, perhaps. Now it held five beds: two maternity cases, with babies who demanded to be fed all through the night, a woman with a broken leg, an old woman with pneumonia, and Jean. It was not an army hospital, for the nearest ones had no women’s wards, and so they’d brought her here.

  The hospital was run by Matron Higgins, who had been a registered nurse before the war. She and her mother had turned their cottage into a hospital. Matron had put Jean in a pneumonia jacket to keep her chest warm the first night and for the next two days old Mrs Higgins applied a mustard plaster to her chest and then covered it with brown paper under her nightdress each morning.

  ‘A sovereign way to warm a body up,’ she kept saying. ‘Sovereign.’ Mrs Higgins also brought the newspaper each morning, which the patients took turns reading.

  There was no mention of the sinking of their ship, though lots of people must have known about it, including Matron and Mrs Higgins, who had been told Jean was rescued from a sunken ship. They must also have seen her uniform, now washed and dried and ironed and folded on the table by her bed. The calico nightdress and combinations she now wore had been donated by the local Ladies’ Guild.

  Nor was Jean in the lists of Wounded, and none of the other women either in Wounded, Missing or Dead, including Miss Eglamore, but then the women weren’t in the army, even though they had taken the oath and worked under army orders. She couldn’t find Lieutenant Galbraith’s name either, though she searched for it each day. The names of those who had died or were wounded would not have been published all on the same day, as they might have been picked up by other ships, or even swum ashore, or, just possibly, one of the lifeboats had been launched.

  Had Alan Galbraith survived? She couldn’t ask because she wasn’t supposed to have been speaking to him. Perhaps, one day, when the war was over, she could find Galbraith’s steelworks in Bristol, and ask after Alan Galbraith.

  Even though her name hadn’t been in the newspaper, someone must have sent a telegram home, because a suitcase arrived on the fourth day, just before she left to catch the train to Folkestone once more.

  The suitcase had another three pairs of newly made combinations — Mama must have stayed up all night to make them — another spare petticoat, a dress, a travelling rug — not new, this time — Jean’s second-best nightdress, slippers, Mama’s own thick flannel dressing gown, Papa’s copy of The Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a new sewing kit, a cake of rose-scented soap, and once again, a hot water bottle.

  There was also a big block of chocolate in another oilcloth bag, and a letter. Jean wasn’t sure if her tears were of love or heartbreak for all those she’d known who’d been lost, but she smiled too, as she looked at the chocolate, as her last block had survived not just the sinking of the ship, but the hours in the English Channel and her rescue. She now had two blocks of chocolate.

  She held the letter to her face before she opened it. It had Papa’s handwriting on it, and she could smell the bay rum he used on his face after shaving, and maybe even leather from the chairs and leather-covered books in his study. She opened it carefully.

  My Dearest Daughter,

  Words cannot express the great pride your mother and I feel at the work you have volunteered for, or our joy that you are safe. We pray to God each day that you remain so.

  Life here plods on from day to day. The sixth form express their eagerness to turn eighteen, and do their bit to serve their country. Miss Pigeon informs me that little Jenny Maskin has taken your place at the post office. She does not know Morse code, so Miss Pigeon has had to bring down the old alphabet machine from the attic, where the arrows point to each letter as the signal comes in, but this of course is very slow. Miss Pigeon sends her very best wishes. The soap is from her. She would have added a jar of raspberry jam, but your mama persuaded her it might break en route and leave your clothes sadly sticky.

  Your mama and I continue well. We have added another female teacher to the staff, Mrs Fotherington, whose husband is in the Middle East. She has an inclination towards mathematics that is unusual in a woman and will make an excellent substitute until our men come home.

  Your mama sends her dearest love, and I remain,

  Your loving and proud father,

  Henry McLain

  Jean put on her uniform again. It smelled of fresh starch and ironing. She put on the coat, which had looked so shapeless when new that even a dunking in the English Channel couldn’t make it worse, the shoes, the hat, freshly starched as well, and a miracle that the elastic band under her chin had kept it on, and possibly helped keep her warm enough to stay alive. She picked up her suitcase and walked to the station to catch the train. Swallows darted about the roofs like tiny fighter planes. Roses bloomed fatly pink and red and white in gardens: all the beauty of an English summer.

  The strawberries would be ripe at home at Butterwood, but there would not be much jam this year, with sugar so hard to find in the shops, and few people would have cream to eat with the strawberries, or butter with scones. Meat was scarce too. Matron had fed her patients eggs from their own hens, and stewed rabbit from the hutches behind their cottage.

  But Jean was going to France to serve her country.

  Chapter 8

  BURRANGONG, SEPTEMBER 1978

  The water had risen almost to their feet on the rubbish bin’s concrete plinth as the sun sank a furious blazing red into the flooded horizon. Arjun almost expected the water to sizzle. But the lake around them just grew purple instead of brown, then slowly blacker as sunlight ebbed from the world.

  He was scared. He had felt terror before, but at least they had been escaping. Now they were helpless. He had hoped it would drain away as fast as it had come, but it must still be raining upstream, and besides, the land was so flat here there wasn’t anywhere for it to drain away to, at least not quickly. The water could even creep up further on them in the night. They wouldn’t know until they felt it cold and wet, relentless.

  It would be truly dark soon. If only they had a torch. Anything could happen in the dark. A log might crash into them. The storm might move downstream, water all round them instead of just at their feet. Another wave of water might come crashing down. Could snakes swim?

  Headlights, he thought suddenly. ‘Turn the headlights on!’

  ‘Can’t. They’re broken. I tested them before I turned the engine off.’

  ‘We . . . we should shout for help then,’ he said, ashamed that his voice trembled.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs McLain firmly.

  ‘W-why not?’

  ‘If anyone’s in a boat nearby we’ll see their torchlight. We can yell for help then. But if by some miracle they hear us in town they might send a boat out tonight.’

  ‘But that’s good!’

  ‘It’s dangerous! A boat setting out in this flood in the dark, with who knows what logs and snags and currents? We wait for daylight, my lad. I’m not having anyone risking their life just so we don’t have to spend a night on a hilltop.’

  She began to rummage in the rubbish bin. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. Ah, wonderful!’ She held up two newspapers in the last of the twilight: the really thick Saturday editions with all the supplements of advertisements for cars and houses, marriages, funerals and births. She handed Arjun one of them. ‘Time to make ourselves some Anzac trousers.’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Don’t they teach you anything at school? Stuff sheets of newspaper down your jeans, and back and front of your shirt. Anzac trousers will keep you warmer than two coats and a pair of thermal underwear. They are thermal underwear, I suppose. Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t be so modest. I’ll turn my back, and you can turn yours too. But scrunch up each sheet before you stuff it in your clothes. The more air you trap, the warmer you’ll be.’

  Arjun turned around, and cautiously began to stuff his jeans, and as much as he could under his T-shirt. Mrs McLain had been right. He felt warmer within a minute.

  ‘I’d give you my leather jacket, but it’s far too small for you. Line your shoes, too.’

  ‘They’re wet.’

  ‘All the more reason to line them. You wearing wool socks, or nylon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He heard her sigh.

  ‘Probably nylon then. Wool keeps its warmth when it’s wet. You won’t catch me wearing anything but wool. You can turn round now.’

  She rummaged in the bin again, then handed him a waxed packet that had once held potato chips. ‘At least this is waterproof. Tear it in half and line your socks with it. Put two big sheets of paper around your shoulders for a cape. Hold on a sec, I’ve got a spare safety pin to fasten it. Now for our heads.’

  He watched in the last of the light as she quickly folded newspaper, then handed him something that looked like a paper bucket.

  ‘Pull it over your head like this, so it goes over the back of your neck and down to your eyes. About a third of body heat is lost from your neck and head. Right, we’re set for the night. Into the rubbish bin!’

  ‘What! I’m not getting into the rubbish bin! Or . . . or do you think the water’s going to wash us away?’

  ‘No,’ she said patiently. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s nearly stopped rising. Whatever storm sent it downriver is probably over now, and whatever is coming down on us now is draining from the high points of the mountains. But you’ll be warmer in the bin.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve got my jacket, and I’m used to being out at night. I spent a night camped out once a week when I was delivering mail.’

  ‘Was that out here, or in England?’

  ‘I never delivered mail when I was a girl in England. It wasn’t thought quite respectable, wandering about the countryside, not suitable for a headmaster’s daughter. And you wouldn’t catch me camping out midwinter in England.’

  He glanced at the bin uncertainly. ‘It’ll be mucky in there.’

  ‘Life throws you a bit of muck sometimes. All you can do is put up with it.’

  He felt stupid, but he clambered into the bin. Immediately he realised she was right again. It was warmer, and more sheltered, but he could also lean back and relax, even though it was cramped. It didn’t even smell, or not much — mostly of old orange peel.

  He heard shuffling as Mrs McLain sat cross-legged on the motorbike seat then leaned back against the outside of the bin, then silence.

  So much silence, except for random swirls as tree trunks and other debris floated past. The top of the water had looked almost peaceful, but the currents must be strong below.

  ‘Did you really feel you were going to serve your country?’ Arjun asked, to crack the quiet.

  ‘Of course. I think people still do think like that,’ she said slowly. ‘We were just more open about it then. I don’t mean only serving in a war. All lives need to have meaning, to make the world better in some way.’