Gus was lost. Without the comradeship and the discipline of life on the Shenandoah he felt like a ship without a rudder, adrift in choppy seas. All through his childhood he had had one aim in life, to go to sea. Now he had done that and found it was not, after all, what he wanted. He no longer knew what he wanted, or where his life was going.

His contact with men like Mason and the other officers, educated men, had given him a glimpse of another kind of existence, where you could read books and have interesting discussions. He had seen the way Victoria and her family lived in Melbourne. Even his sister’s new life was nearer to what he felt, however dimly, he wanted. But his lack of education and his poverty seemed to be an insuperable barrier and he could not see a way forward.

As the weeks and months passed he drifted from one job to another. He worked for a spell in the kitchens of the Sailor’s Home, using the skills he had learned from Boney. But that came to an end when he lost his temper with a fellow worker and punched him on the nose. Then he got a job as a pot-boy in a dockside pub, but lost that after an altercation with a customer. He drifted back to working casually as a tally clerk, filling in when someone fell ill or was injured.

Now that they were all more or less solvent, the other three men he shared lodgings with began to look beyond the pub for entertainment. The streets around the docks were the haunt of prostitutes and Snowy, Pete and Mick all made use of their services. They tried to persuade Gus to join them, but he had not forgotten the brothel in Melbourne. The women with their painted faces and brazen manners reminded him too vividly of his humiliation then. The thought of paying for services, which so many other men had enjoyed before him, revolted him.

There was one girl, Lily, who attracted him, because she was pale and vulnerable and awoke in him a desire, not to sleep with her, but to protect her. But she had become Mick’s particular favourite. She waited for him every evening and sometimes Gus watched covertly and saw how anxious she became if he was late and how pathetically eager she was to please when he appeared. His manner to her, on the other hand, was casual and offhand. Gus felt she deserved better.

May did her best to keep in touch with him and to encourage him, but it was hard work and she sometimes felt so exasperated with his lack of purpose that she almost gave up.

One Tuesday evening in early summer, as she left the store, two men stepped forward out of the shadows.

‘Miss Lavender?’