‘Sir John Temple,’ she read out. ‘Look, isn’t the picture sweet? Doesn’t he look lovely? He was so splendid, like a young lion. But you can see it in his eyes – a look of longing. I sent myself to him for years. Sometimes dressed as a clerk, sometimes as a passerby, sometimes sitting in court, watching him. Of course I could never stay long, and I’m sure that he wondered about things. He would notice me, and then I would leave. Perhaps he thought he was dreaming.

‘He became a barrister – one of the best of his generation – and then a judge. He did marry of course – a horsey, county type, gum-boots and dogs. Five children. Lady Temple sounds well, does it not? Mummy would have been proud. I sent myself to his funeral – it was the only time I was able to sit there as myself, in the black dress that I had been wearing when he met me. When I came back, I could not move for three days.’

Tom held Zita’s hand. She sobbed into his shoulder.

The grandfather clock in the hall struck the hour, and the obituary fluttered to the ground.

Chapter 12

1st June, 1846

Mother was vexed with me all day, as she found out I’d lost my pearl hatpin. I could not tell her where it had gone.

— From the diary of Margaret Ravenswood

Whenever Tom could, he would return to his room, and sitting down on his bed, pull out from his bedside drawer the dog-eared photograph of himself, his mother and his father.

In it, he was almost twelve years old. It had been taken about a week before the accident. Tom, holding both their hands, was smiling shyly somewhere to the side; his parents were both grinning. They were in France, getting ready for their expedition. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a baseball cap.

Tom had wanted so much to go with them. They would cross the Atlantic in a boat for two people. Tom had begged and pleaded with them to let him join in. They had been firm, though. Tom’s father and mother were experienced sailors; a boat would be near by them all the time; they would be tracked and watched, their experiences filmed, their day-to-day lives broadcast across the world. It was for charity, as much as it was for their own sense of adventure.

Everything was predicted, everything planned out down to the last iota.

Everything, that is, except the weather.

They could not have predicted the sudden storm that came from nowhere and spun their boat as if it were a toy; the breakage of their radio; the capsizing of their boat and the inability of the rescuers to find them in the darkness.

He wanted to see them – to be near them again. To see them on the boat. To hold their hands once more. Would Jack be able to bring Tom to them?