Up on deck one day I saw a woman with a little girl tied to her: the mother had one end of the rope around her wrist and the other end was tied around the little girl’s waist. The mum kept dozing off, and so the rope was her way of minding the child, who was too young to be trusted on her own. Every time the girl came to the end of the rope it would jerk her, and tug on the mother, and the girl would wail and the mother get cross. I thought about how much I missed Mum; it felt like there was a rope tying us together as well.

I went over and offered to mind the child for a bit. The woman—Shirley was her name—said that she and the girl, Iris, had been having a rough journey.

‘There’s twelve of us, mothers and babies, in our cabin, and we’re low in the ship with no portholes, so the room is stuffy and damp all of the time, and each time one of the babies gets sick we all do. We’ve all spent the trip with diarrhoea, vomiting and everything else you can imagine.’

I said I would take Iris for a little stroll if Shirley wanted to nap on one of the deckchairs, and she took me up on it. As I held the girl’s chubby little hand and walked from one end of the deck to the other, I wondered what things would be like now if Roy and I hadn’t been careful, if I had fallen pregnant on our wedding night and was bringing our child with me. What if it had been our only chance? Why is it only when opportunities are lost that we start to wish for them so keenly? I wanted a tangible piece of him, but I also knew that the journey would be much more difficult with a baby. Now I only had to be responsible for myself, and though I felt trepidation at what lay ahead, and sorrow for what I had left behind, it was also an adventure.

I kneeled down to Iris’s height by the railing and pointed out the seagulls diving into the water. ‘Birds!’ she called.

‘If you’re lucky, you might see a dolphin. I saw a school out of them here yesterday.’

I looked up and one of the naval officers stood above us in his white uniform with dark blue epaulets. I stood up as well. He had binoculars in his hand and passed them to me, and I held them low for Iris to look through.

‘How old is your little girl?’

‘Oh, she’s not mine. I’m just watching her. But I think she’s about two.’

The officer nodded and smiled. It was a smart uniform, certainly, and I thought of Min and the innumerable times she’d already mentioned her naval officer husband.