As the minutes wore on, the hustle and bustle grew. Sailors called to one another and the queue of passengers dwindled as the man with the roll of paper checked off their names on his list. They were rowed out in tens to board ship, and still I sat there perched on my trunk waiting for Lucien to arrive.

‘There’s not another place you can board, is there?’

Barky shrugged his shoulders.

The fear that he might have boarded without me was growing, and it tightened my throat, making it impossible to speak. Surely he wouldn’t leave me at risk of missing the boat while I waited for him? He couldn’t be that angry over the little that he knew for sure. Barky said reassuring things from time to time, and that the roads must be bad, but I could tell he was worried for me by the way he kept his head on the swivel for whatever direction Lucien might come in.

This wait was the last thing I needed. Ever since Lucien had proposed to me, I’d felt like I’d been swept on to a steam train. I’d liked the thought of speeding to a new life but my final performance at Crillick’s, freeing Nosizwe and her child, had all happened so quickly I’d started to feel more and more like it wasn’t a machine I was on at all, but a runaway stage coach. What did I know about Sierra Leone? It was only a few weeks ago that I’d heard of it at all. Some of the talk I’d overheard by more sceptical listeners at Exeter Hall came back to me. Slavers patrolling, arid ground. There were so many things that might go wrong, and Lucien, who’d made it all seem so exciting to me, was late. Shifts, six cotton; shoes, sturdy, two pairs; one straw hat; three nets to keep off mosquitoes. To stop myself from wondering if I was doing the right thing, I ran through the items I still needed to buy when we reached Liverpool.

‘Here we go,’ Barky said. But when I looked up, it wasn’t Lucien on his way towards us but Vincent.

‘Is he coming?’ Barky asked him.

Vincent nodded. I looked from one man to the other, confused. Vincent’s cheeks were flushed and I sensed that he’d been running. He never ran.

Barky bent down so his eyes were level with mine.

‘You’re going to have to board now, Zillah. I know you wanted to wait for Lucien, but Crillick will be here any minute. We can’t let him catch up to you.’

I looked over to Vincent who had his hands on his knees to catch his breath. That told me all I needed to know. I jumped up and tried to pull my trunk, but it was a dead weight.

‘You’ll have to leave it for now.’