We’ve talked more of plans for when we return which comforts me, makes the trip sound more temporary, something I can endure knowing we will come home again once and for all. We talk of how we will remain at Shibden, possibly even sell Crow Nest and use the money to improve the Hall even more and for the first time in my life, never returning to Crow Nest does not fill me with dread or sorrow. After my years here at Shibden, it feels like home. When I visit Crow Nest these days it feels like a hotel.

After this trip we will live out our days contentedly, she assures me. We’ll have her book published and we can put travelling behind us.

Hopefully Marian will come back to us and my sister will visit more often on our return – oh, how I miss her! I will be abandoning her for years with no one to even correspond with, for once we reach Russia, it could be weeks or months for post, and I will miss everything and be unable to help in any way. I can see why so few people travel; it is all-consuming, to be plucked from one’s life and transported elsewhere with no definite return date, no idea what life will bring, both for us, the travellers, and those we leave behind. What if either of us falls ill, and the other is left to nurse them, to try to bring them home? I shall make myself ill with the worry of it. Both of us are now leaving our sisters to their fates, even though they are all we have left – a sister each whom we abandon for our own adventure. If only they could come too.

With no last-minute reprieve, no last-minute letter from Marian to rescue me by coming home to us, no letter from Elizabeth to say Sutherland has died and she is free to return, the day is upon us.

I check my bags and my trunk again. How is it possible to know what to take for two years? Everything, ideally, but nothing that can be too easily damaged or crumpled or suffer in adverse weather. Nothing too valuable in case it is stolen. Nothing too precious in case it is lost. I should just place myself in the trunk and have done. Lock myself inside it until we arrive.

I detest journeys. The confines of the carriage, the rocking of the ship, the packing and unpacking along the way, never being able to find what you need and the language around you that you do not understand. Eyes on you, judging you, no different from here at home, wondering who these two pale women are, arm in arm, and what we are doing in their country.