I held the shell to my face, breathing in the faintest smell of a cold, faraway sea, of all I had left behind. And left gladly, I reminded myself.

I turned to find little-boy eyes blinking, watching me, from across the room. I saw them all the time, eyes like these, in darkness, in the full glare of a blinding sun. Sometimes laughing at a runaway rabbit, sometimes crying from the blue expanse of somewhere I could not follow.

I reached out, but they blinked again. Were gone.

A catch in my throat, a violent shiver. Struggling to find a rhythm for my breathing again.

Haldane, I whispered silently, forcing a calmness I did not feel. It’s only wee Hal’s face.

I let the shell drop to the floor, then quickly scrabbled to pick it up again. It’s like this, with memories, lambsie: you want to push them away, then you want to hold them tight. It makes no kind of sense.

I put the limpet shell with the one the little girl had given me on the beach not long after we’d arrived. The old and the new.

~

Only a few nights, it was, before Magnus cycled home with two bottles of Penguin Ale from Castlemaine and a parcel of river prawns, wrapped in newspaper, from the Greeks who used to drop their nets near the brewery.

What’s all this, then? I asked. Did ye find a spare pound flappin’ in the breeze?

He looked across at Clementina with a question on his face.

Have ye not …?

We’re off tomorrow! Stivvy cut in, singing. Off ta Merredin in the morning! Off ta a new life! Say hello ta your farmer friends, lassie! And he galloped to the kitchen and back, Jessie under one arm and Hal under the other.

Oh. Tomorrow … That’s … that’s … wonderful …

And Stivvy Ratter came to a halt and stared at the sight of the farmer’s wife and the factory girl weeping silently into each other’s hair.

~

It’s a warm, clear Saturday in autumn 1912 when I summon up every scrap of strength I have to bid goodbye to Clementina, Stivvy and the bairns and wish them the happiness I long for them to have.

We are determined, Clementina and I, we made a promise the night before: we are done with crying, there will be no more of it. And so it was that we had busied ourselves with packing up, with cutting pieces for the long rattling journey east, with making lists of supplies to be sent on later once they are settled. And now we stand, hand in hand, holding on. And then she looks up and snorts, in true Clementina style, flicking her fingers at the sun.

Well, quinie, look at that. Another bloddy blue sky.

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