Before I could answer this she was making for the lift.

“Write to me, and don’t forget . . .” Belinda started to say, then remembered she was supposed to be French. I blew her a kiss as I rushed to keep up with my mother. We emerged from the lift and Mummy swept grandly across the main floor, past bowing attendants and out to a waiting taxicab.

Chapter 4

THURSDAY, JULY 12, 1934

We sail today! Dying to see the Berengaria. America, here I come. Can’t wait. But I do wish I could have told Darcy where I was going. He is so infuriating!!!!

The next days were a whirlwind of Mummy doing her own shopping for essentials that apparently couldn’t be obtained in America—like toothpaste, getting her hair done, getting my hair done, buying new luggage for me and new hats for us both. I must say it was rather exciting to be caught up in this shopping whirlwind. I hoped Max didn’t have a fit when he saw the bills and decide not to marry her after all.

Then the day of departure dawned. It was almost like a dream as our bags were whisked downstairs and into taxicabs. Soon our train was steaming out of Waterloo Station, bound for Southampton. My only wish was that my hateful sister-in-law, Fig, might have been there to watch me depart in style. (Usually I have a nice nature but Fig had certainly made my life miserable for quite a while and deserved comeuppance.) My other wish was that I could have told Darcy where I was going. As usual I had no way to contact him. Better still I would have wished that he was coming too!

I had crossed the Channel plenty of times but I’d never seen an actual ocean liner. My jaw dropped as we pulled up beside the Berengaria. She was enormous with three shiny red funnels, already puffing out wisps of smoke. It was like staring up at the Dorchester.

“Come along, darling, don’t dawdle,” Mummy said, heading for the first class gangway. “And try not to gawp. You look like a country bumpkin.”

We were welcomed on board in the effusive manner that Mummy expected, and escorted up to A deck where Mummy was to have a suite. I had once had a cabin on an overnight Channel crossing from Ostend so I was expecting something like a railway sleeping car with bunks on one side and a washbasin. Therefore I was not prepared when the steward opened the door and we stepped into a spacious sitting room with a sofa and armchairs, a writing desk between two picture windows and thick pile carpeting. There were flowers on the table and champagne on ice.