“Come on, Nora, hurry up.” Delia took me by the arm and steered me toward the gangplank. “Here’s your ticket!” I shook off her arm and took the ticket. She’d become bossy all of a sudden. She wouldn’t have dared speak to me that way at home. I followed her up the gangplank, struggling a little with the weight of my suitcases.

As I walked up the gangplank, I caught sight of the dark water lapping below. I swallowed hard. I was deathly afraid of water, ever since the time Delia tried to drown me in the river near our cottage. She always denied it, saying she was only trying to hold me up when I started to struggle. But I didn’t believe her. Ma didn’t either. I looked away quickly and let my eyes bore into the porter’s back instead.

The porter led us down several sets of stairs. The suitcases grew heavier in my grip and my breathing labored from exhaustion. With every new flight of stairs, I groaned. Mother of God, was he leading us down into Hell itself? At last we came to a long, narrow corridor with doors lined on either side. The porter stopped at number 23 and unlocked the door. He smiled at Delia and me.

“Here’s your cabin, girls,” he said, as if it was the Taj Mahal. “You should find everything you need. Ye are lucky, ye have this cabin all to yourselves; the other two passengers canceled. The toilets are around the corner there.” He pointed to his right. “They’re flushing toilets,” he went on. “I bet ye have never seen the likes of them in your life.”

I glared at him. “That’ll be all, thank you,” I said in my most polite voice. “We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

His mouth dropped open. Then he let out a loud guffaw. “Ah sure, you’re a great teaser, love,” he said. “A great teaser altogether.” With that, he moved on to the next cabin.

The space was tiny, with four berths and a washbasin. The pine walls were painted white and the floor was linoleum. I suppose it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but I wouldn’t give Delia the satisfaction of telling her so. I heaved my suitcases onto the nearest bed and sat down. I watched Delia, who was humming to herself as she opened her suitcase to unpack.

“We’ll only be needing two changes of clothes, and we can rinse them in between,” she said. “No need to take everything out of the cases.”