Penguin Books Australia

Chapter 1

OCTOBER 2001

The wooden fishing boat was overcrowded and had no name. In time it would be called SIEV X, the initials standing for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel and the X denoting its unknown origin. The passengers on board, the majority of them women and children, were frightened, for the boat was not what they had been promised. They had been assured it was a seaworthy craft, one that would take them to an Australian island where relatives and friends would be waiting to welcome them. They were prepared to pay whatever they could afford and take any risk to be reconciled with their families, until they saw the vessel.

It was dilapidated, rotting in places, and appeared unsafe for a voyage anywhere, let alone a thousand-kilometre journey across the Java Sea to Christmas Island. Realising the danger, most of the passengers were trying to disembark and reclaim the precious money paid for their passage, but a squad of armed police summoned by the smuggler, Abu Quassey, was preventing them.

Bewildered children began to cry, unnerved by the anxiety of their parents. There was a scuffle as a husband pushed his way to where Quassey stood protected by a bodyguard, demanding the right to take his family off the boat. The bodyguard produced a pistol. Passengers scattered as Quassey used the butt of the weapon to hit the complainant savagely to the temple. There were screams, then a cowed silence as the man collapsed with blood streaming from his head.

The clamour to be set ashore resumed among the terrified parents. A young mother with three small daughters approached the police, begging them to help her leave the ship. Her daughters, pretty girls between the ages of six and nine and wearing colourful batik dresses with matching white ribbons in their hair, all watched while their mother was forced back at gunpoint and told this was impossible; there could be no refunds, nor could anyone disembark because the local authorities had lost patience and decreed these homeless people could not remain in Indonesia any longer.

Included among the nationalities on board were Afghani men and women in flight from the Taliban, and Iranian fugitives escaping religious persecution. But the majority were Iraqi wives with children, attempting to reach Australia to join their husbands who had fled from Saddam Hussein. The men had come on earlier boats to places like Christmas Island or Ashmore Reef, and after interrogation in detention centres had been granted temporary protection visas. But a rash of new legislation had imposed different conditions on the visas: from now on they would find it almost impossible to become citizens, and if they did manage to stay in this country they would not be allowed family reunions. The reality that this was in effect a lifetime ban against ever seeing their wives and children again took time to absorb; it seemed so inhuman.

It was not something the wives or children knew about. After long separation they had escaped from Iraq, selling their homes to buy fares and forged papers that would take them on a perilous journey across Pakistan to Jakarta. Their first goal was to reach the Australian embassy and apply for the right to join their husbands or relatives. Some were already classified genuine political refugees by the United Nations, but at the visa application centre on the Plaza Abda this did not seem to count. There they pleaded for safe asylum, lodged their applications as directed, then waited in hope. They heard nothing.

In some cases a few years passed without a reply. Stranded in Indonesia, disliked by the locals and called illegals, they were refused entitlement to work or access to medical care. Their children were prohibited from attending school. The families lived by banding together, renting derelict buildings, sometimes as many as forty or fifty people occupying a few dilapidated rooms, getting a few hours rest each day by sleeping in shifts. What money they still had was rapidly diminishing. They felt utterly rejected by the rest of the world, wondering if anyone knew or cared of their plight, and correctly suspecting in their misery that no one did.

So when Abu Quassey - an Egyptian smuggler who operated with impunity in the region - circulated news around the marketplaces that he had a boat capable of taking them to Australian territory on Christmas Island, those who still had money gladly accepted his offer. Any cost, any risk, seemed preferable to what they had been enduring, living in limbo without prospect of a future. It was how most of them felt until they saw the flimsy transport, and then at gunpoint they were prevented from disembarking.

The boat had barely left the Sumatran coast before it was perilously low in the water, and one of the bilge pumps failed. The crew forced male passengers to help keep it afloat by bailing. The women tried to find space for their children to rest, and sought protective shade from the harsh afternoon sun. As it grew dark the air became oppressive. A humid breeze brought no relief. The diesel engine kept a steady rhythmic beat, but the ocean swell grew turbulent and towards midnight waves started to wash over the deck. Some passengers cursed, others prayed; all were dripping wet from the increasing spray and the sweat of their own bodies. There was a total of four hundred and twenty-one people on board, and most of them were unaware that there were only sixty life jackets.

Kate drove home feeling tired and discouraged. It had been a frustrating day, ever since she reached the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney's west that morning to be met by the sign she knew from previous visits:

 PROPERTY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA.

There was a rumour the sign had once contained the word 'Welcome', but Kate assumed this was just a sick joke. Welcome was not something she had ever experienced there, and after a ninety-minute wait in the heat before being admitted to the visitors' processing area, she then had to undergo the slow security check through access gates protected by a razor-wire fence. The procedure was always rigid, but the mood of those on duty could vary, and today the guards seemed more aggressive than usual. Despite being a frequent visitor she had to fill in the same form each time and prove her identity, and was then abruptly ordered to leave her car keys, her licence and mobile phone - all of them forbidden items that would be returned when she left. Handbags and other personal objects had to remain in the car. Anything in the way of gifts brought in for detainees had to be listed, then handed over to be placed on a conveyor belt and X-rayed. It was a long, slow process endured by a queue of refugee advocates, caseworkers, lawyers and volunteer visitors) all trying to conceal resentment at the confrontational manner of the guards, for it would only increase their hostility.

A band was attached to Kate's wrist before she passed through the metal detector. It did not trigger the alarm, for she was carrying only a telephone card for her client and packets of biscuits for the children. A loud announcement on the public address system drowned the next order from a female guard, but Kate knew what was required; she held out her hand to be imprinted with a coded stamp, then queued to go through the final locked checkpoint. It was hard to believe this place had once been a cheerful migrant hostel.

In the compound with its few plastic tables and sparse number of chairs, she met with a Burmese mother and her two daughters who had been detained for over a year. A petite attractive woman, she was plainly afraid of being deported back to Burma, where her husband had been imprisoned and then executed by the military junta. Kate had to break the distressing news that they'd exhausted every avenue for a stay of expulsion. A last appeal to the Immigration Minister to grant a bridging visa on humanitarian grounds had been turned down. He gave no reason for the decision to send them back, nor under the new regulations was he required to do so.

The children cried and their mother did her best to calm them, while she tried haltingly to express her thanks for the efforts made on her behalf. But despite this instinctive courtesy, it was her scared and dismayed face that stayed with Kate long after she left.

The remainder of the day did not improve. There had been two hearings before a single arbitrator at the Refugee Review Tribunal, both cases dismissed with little hope of an appeal. All afternoon their small office had been crowded with people anxiously seeking help. The work was becoming more stressful as the public attitude to refugees turned increasingly hostile. There had been previous tides of opinion against people seeking asylum - Kate could remember the antipathy to the fleets of escaping Vietnamese after Saigon fell, and later resentment against dissident Chinese who fled after the massacre in Tiananmen Square - but this time the xenophobia came with a far broader impact. The startling electoral success of the One Nation political party had unearthed an ugly ant-heap of racism.

It had always been there - Kate knew this from her own childhood - but now it seemed to be allowed to openly flourish. The equivocation of censure by the government and the lack of an official curb on broadcasters freely voicing their racially prejudiced sentiments had rapidly created a climate of intolerance that bred hate and fear. 'Boat people' became an expression of odium and denunciation. No matter that they had escaped from terror, torture and threats of death - they were regarded as trespassers, unwanted, and, if they managed to arrive at all, detained and treated like prisoners. The prime minister proclaimed that he would decide who came to live here, and the electorate cheered and voted for this siege mentality.

It was with a feeling of respite from the trauma of the day that Kate drove across the Gothic-style bridge and turned into the peaceful familiarity of her street where she had lived for the past twenty-five years. The house was built on a block of sloping land that had once been chaotic with wild blackberry bushes and lantana. It was a very different setting now with the shrubs they had planted flourishing in a riot of spring colour. Hibiscus and waratahs blended with a display of wisteria and bougainvillea, while towering over the house and garage were red gums that had been saplings when they moved in, now stately landmarks.

Kate was just a month away from her fiftieth birthday, but looked younger. Slim and above-average height, an olive skin was almost the only legacy of her Greek origin. She had dark-blue eyes that often caused comment, which Kate met by explaining these had been inherited from her mother, so the question of where they derived from should be addressed to her. The eyes were offset by silky black hair that she'd worn long when young, but was now neatly cut so it framed her oval face. A face, Joshua had once said, that could launch at least a thousand ships. Joshua and his silver tongue, she thought, in a sudden slip of memory.

She had found this house by chance. Her car at the time, an old Kingswood, had broken down, and she'd walked up the driveway to ask if she could use the phone. On first impression it had appeared like a derelict bungalow with a FOR SALE sign. Two cars were parked outside, and as she approached a couple had hastily emerged from the house, followed by a discomfited estate agent. Kate was close enough to hear them say it was a shocking dump, an absolute tip, and no wonder it'd been on the market for ages. As they drove off, the agent, without any real expectation, invited Kate to inspect the premises. When she asked if she could use the phone to get road service, his sigh made her laugh sympathetically and agree to a quick look around while waiting for the breakdown truck.

The interior was shabby and in appalling disrepair. But Kate had taken one look at the surprisingly generous-sized rooms with their high ceilings and, despite crumbling plaster cornices, broken bathroom tiles and a smell of damp rot, had fallen in love with it. Despite also a surveyor's report that warned the drains were blocked, the electric wiring was dangerous and the roof was an. invitation to disaster the next time it rained.

They had risked what seemed like a mammoth mortgage in those days. It had been a struggle, but gradually the district with its leafy proximity to the city had become a target for developers. Friends said they should leave, estate agents made offers, but Kate determinedly held out against temptation. In time as their neighbours sold, took profits and moved to coastal retreats, the original homes were all demolished until theirs was the only one remaining. Old and ramshackle to some newcomers but a cherished relic to her. She prized its abundant foliage that almost hid it from the neat rows of compact villas that had become the up-market neighbourhood.

Leave here? Kate thought, as she settled herself with a glass of wine, not bloody likely. She secretly knew, of course, that she couldn't really afford it any longer, but preferred not to think too deeply about the state of her finances.

She switched on the evening news. High on the agenda was a debate about retaliation against those who had attacked New York and Washington a month earlier. The world was still in shock from the constant television replays of the unthinkable; two planes filled with passengers crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Informed opinion declared a war was certain; Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were the logical targets, but there was talk of an invasion to enforce regime change in Iraq. American, British and Australian leaders were united in declaring they had positive proof Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence sources added their authentication about the threat of chemical warfare: missiles that could deliver poison gas and potent killing agents like anthrax. Even the likelihood of a nuclear strike was mooted; in the rush to overturn Hussein nothing was ruled out.

These subjects, together with a federal election heading into the final weeks, were the main topics of debate on the television screens of Australia that October night.

In the darkness on board SIEV X the terrified women tried to shelter their children from the wind and unceasing torrential rain. They yearned for the dawn, but when it came it brought an even greater foreboding; a vast empty ocean without a trace of land and, far more ominously, the certain prospect of worse to come. The sea was a churning vista of unruly whitecaps and threatening waves were sweeping across the overcrowded deck. Within an hour the temperature had climbed to a blistering 40C. One man holding his infant son tried to bribe the captain to turn about and head for Java Head, but was berated as a coward by others who offered the crew a bonus to continue sailing south. They felt certain they were almost in sight of Christmas Island. It could only be another hour or two. We must go on, they insisted. We've waited years for this chance, and there will never be another.

Children became seasick and fretful with sunburn. Their mothers tried vainly to comfort them. Though it was not one of their own legends, the name Christmas Island had a magical sound. Santa Claus Island, one of the women who had been a teacher told them. She promised it would have a sandy beach, palm trees and houses. Their fathers would all be gathered there to greet them. And afterwards they would travel on a fine boat to Australia, where there would be homes to live in, jobs for their parents and schools for them to attend.

A fairytale, some thought sadly, but if God was kind they might yet live happily ever after. They weren't asking for much. Just a refuge, a place in which to be free. In Australia there could be no despot as dangerous and malevolent as Saddam, and no place like Abu Ghraib, where many of their relatives and friends had been tortured or hanged for dissent or imaginary crimes against the regime.

The afternoon passed slowly. The sea grew wilder. Rain became more ferocious. Despite the turbulence some passengers managed to sleep. The teacher did her best to engage a group of children with more stories. Then at four o'clock the engine abruptly stopped. In a moment of shock that followed, the captain shouted a warning that the boat was taking water, but there was barely time to imagine what this might mean before the SIEV X rolled violently and then capsized amid screams of terror, mindless chaos and death.

In Australia twenty-four hours later the media reported rumours of a fishing boat missing in the Java Sea, and later confirmed that wreckage had been sighted and some survivors already picked up. The news received scant coverage because of a busy weekend of sport with the impending Melbourne Cup, and the start of a new cricket season. In addition the federal election mood was intensifying, with both parties claiming their ability to govern the country in this frightening new era of global terrorism.

Kate woke early on the Monday morning. High in one of the red gums a kookaburra greeted the day. She took meat scraps from the refrigerator out to the lawn and watched the bird swoop for his expected offering. Then she brought a tray with her own breakfast to the side verandah and listened to the radio. More election news, after which the bulletin switched to the missing fishing boat. It was now confirmed forty people had been rescued, but full details were not yet available. The weather report predicted a hot day, with it already five degrees above normal. It would be even hotter in western Sydney, Kate thought; the detention centre was a long way from the coast and any prospect of a sea breeze.

She showered and dressed in cotton trousers and shirt, comfortable summertime wear, rinsed the dishes and locked the house. As she drove out of the garage there were more election promises on the car radio, but no further reports of the fishing boat survivors. Kate switched to the CD player, chose a disc by Pavarotti and heard the blissful opening chords of 'Celeste Aida'.

Stopping at the gate to adjust her seatbelt, she frowned at the sight of a figure walking in the middle of the road towards her. Not walking, she corrected herself: marching, as though he was still in army uniform. Although aware he was in her way, he prevented her from driving until he went past. She did not like Victor Henderson, who told people he preferred to answer to his service title. She did not like Captain Henderson, AMP Retired, who was notorious in the neighbourhood for airing grievances and complained frequently to the local council about her gum trees growing too tall and shedding leaves on his property.

She did her best to ignore him, but was conscious that whenever she was in the garden he stopped his twice-daily walk to gaze at the house. Though not really at the house; he gazed at her. Stood there, fingers combing his military moustache. No nod of greeting, just a stare before moving on. It began to anger Kate, who tried to tell herself not to be stupid. She had some very congenial neighbours - surely she should keep one hostile one in perspective? After all, he was staring, not stalking. She could hardly seek a restraining order against a stare.

It was with surprise she realised he was approaching the car. He paused beside her open window.

'Nice morning, isn't it.' They were the first civil words he'd spoken to her in months. She could hardly believe he was actually smiling.

'Yes, it is,' she answered. If this was conciliation she should at least contribute, and meet the unexpected olive branch halfway. But before she could say anything further, he continued.

'Not so nice for those boat people,' he said, the smile still in place. 'Some must've drowned, I reckon. Teach 'em a lesson, won't it?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Well, that's my opinion. Boat people . . . they'd overrun us, those wogs, given half a chance. Serve the greasy buggers right.'

His smile was what appalled her. Not trusting herself to reply, she turned Pavarotti up to full volume. As he took a step backwards reacting angrily to the blast of sound, she drove off without a word.

The office was open when Kate arrived, and Roger was already at his desk trying to manage two calls while a third phone line was ringing.

'Hi, Dodger,' she murmured, kissing the bald spot on the crown of his head. He smiled with relief and spoke to one of his callers.

'Kate's here. She'll handle your enquiry,' he said, and for the next hour they had no chance to exchange another word as the phones rang incessantly.

It was another typical day; soon clients would be arriving. By lunchtime there'd be a queue into the street. The owner of the shop downstairs would complain again. The line of their patient petitioners was an annoyance, blocking the entrance to his premises, he claimed. Other shop owners in the street would support him. It was becoming a problem.

For months the workload had been increasing; their days now began earlier and ended later. They knew the firm needed two additional lawyers, but Roger could not afford them. He could only afford Kate because, as he said when offering her the job, the people he represented were often unable to pay but he didn't feel able to turn anyone away.

'Put at its simplest, Kate,' he'd said quietly, 'I work with a very disadvantaged group. They don't have much money, and I run the place on the smell of an oily rag. They're either refugees themselves - with a family they had to leave behind who are now trying to get visas - or else the family have managed to get here but are being held and treated like criminals in a detention centre. They're not the most popular people on the planet at the moment, and most of the work is pro bono. As for Legal Aid' - he shrugged at the idea - 'there's not much of that about. I'm a one-man band, but I need help. I need someone who knows how to run a law office, which is you, and someone who's able to live on what meagre sum I can afford to pay, which I can only hope you might consider.'

She had met Roger Montgomery, or Roger the Dodger, as he'd always been, years ago when she first worked as a young clerk in his father's law firm where he'd been a junior partner. In those days it was a fine legal practice with offices on the top floor of a gracious sandstone heritage building in Macquarie Street, with a view across the Botanic Gardens to the harbour. In the rush to modernise, the sandstone structure had been replaced by a modern tower of glass and steel, while the law firm, after his father's death, became the subject of a bitter family battle. Roger resigned from it in disgust. The firm still existed but was barely recognisable; a decade of mergers had converted it into an international behemoth, with a list of partners now too long to fit on the letterhead.

Three years away from his sixtieth birthday, Roger was a rumpled and overweight figure despite weekly visits to the gym; a man with enquiring grey eyes and thinning sandy hair. Even as a young lawyer he had been deeply committed, and now more than ever he was seriously concerned about the direction the country was heading in.

'Kids in detention is an obscenity,' he said, when first trying to recruit her. 'The Minister reckons we must have some safeguards. Okay, I'll go along with that, but putting children behind razor wire is immoral and plain crazy. One day they'll grow up to be disturbed adults, or become our enemies queuing up to be suicide bombers.'

'Where's the office?' she'd asked him.

'In Chippendale.' His prompt reply had revealed his eagerness.

'Near the university?'

'No, the less salubrious part. It's a fairly grotty room over a sandwich shop.'

'Sounds irresistible,' she'd said, laughing.

'I can offer you lunch if you'd like to see it.'

'Would that be a sandwich from downstairs?'

'They're very tasty,' Roger had promised.

Driving home that afternoon she fondly recalled her first visit to the office. They'd eaten sandwiches while she watched him cope with the flood of human heartbreak, and there had never been a real doubt in her mind that she wouldn't work there. In fact, she began the next day. She knew the problems he faced; his cases were complex and protracted. Costs were high because of the need for interpreters and translators; in prolonged hearings they were often required on stand-by, and the returns from clients rarely ever matched this outlay.

Expenses and a token salary she'd said would be adequate; she had some savings and a small annuity - enough to live on. He'd been surprised but had accepted gratefully, and she'd gone to see her bank manager and made private arrangements to augment this modest amount. Had she been able to afford it, she would have worked for nothing.

Surprising to think it was over ten years ago now, she realised. Somehow, she and Roger had managed to deal with the scores of cases brought to them until recently, but things had begun to change. The last few years had seen the introduction of much tougher immigration laws, as well as the opening of new detention centres and a growing ruthlessness by the federal government upon discovering border protection was an election winner.

The rest of the Pavarotti disc from that morning accompanied part of Kate's journey home. When it ended with a reprise of 'Nessun Dorma', she switched on the radio. The six o'clock news was in progress. There was an announcement they were crossing back to the ABC's correspondent in Java for a further report.

'This is Warren Riley with the latest on our main story. The death toll from the fishing boat tragedy has now been confirmed as three hundred and sixty-five people dead, one hundred and forty ­two of whom were children . . .'

'Oh Christ,' Kate exclaimed, and pulled in to the side of the road because her hands were trembling. She sat there listening in horror.

'A further one hundred and forty-six were women. It is estimated most of those on board the overcrowded vessel were from Iraq, and the United Nations has verified many had already been assessed as bona fide refugees who had spent years in Indonesia unable to find a country willing to accept them. One survivor we spoke to, Aamar Zaheer, said he was classified in this category more than three years ago.'

'I wait there for so long,' an accented voice said in an interview, 'but no country will help. What can I do . . . I take my wife and baby on this boat, pay the last of our money . . . to find a place to live.'

The correspondent took up the story again. 'Mr Zaheer's wife drowned, but he managed to stay afloat for over twelve hours while somehow holding his baby daughter safely all this time. After a night in the sea they were picked up by another fishing boat, and the child is now being cared for in an Indonesian hospital. There are more reports asserting that many of the passengers, alarmed at the overcrowding and state of the vessel, were prevented from leaving it at gunpoint by local police. A spokesman for the Bandar Lampung police has denied all knowledge of such involvement. This is Warren Riley reporting from Java.'

Kate switched off the radio. It was several minutes before she felt able to drive home.

There was more news during the following days, and harrowing stories of entire families drowned. A political storm erupted between the government and the opposition, with each party trying to claim the moral high ground in a disturbing exhibition of vote chasing and what appeared a callous disregard for the tragic loss of so many lives.

'The equivalent of a jumbo jet full of people have been drowned in this catastrophic event,' one commentator charged, 'and it is appalling to hear both political leaders publicly blaming the other. It is political expediency at its worst, an unedifying spectacle that must make people ashamed at the way each side is exploiting this tragedy. This is a sad week for all those children, and a dishonourable one in the Australian parliament.'

At the end of the week, after a series of distressing stories, came a photograph in the Sydney Morning Herald that seemed to encapsulate the heartbreak. Three young sisters between the ages of six and nine, shy and beautiful children wearing colourful dresses and each with white ribbons in their hair, had all drowned, together with their mother. The photograph was one supplied by their grief-stricken father who had been waiting for them in Australia.

'All dead', he was quoted as saying. 'My three children and my wife, all my family are now dead. The immigration department gave me a temporary protection visa after I flee from Saddam Hussein because his police try to kill me. They gave me a visa, but no access to English lessons. No permanent place, no family reunion. If I stay in your country I'm told I can never again be with my wife and my daughters, so they take the risk to come here to be with me. And now they are dead . . . and I cry alone. I have no one left.'

Kate slept badly that night. She kept having nightmares in which she saw the three drowned girls floating to the surface. The dye from their bright dresses was staining the water the colour of blood, while she was restrained by friends from diving into the sea in a desperate effort to retrieve their bodies. She woke agitated and shivering.

By now she knew from the newspaper stories that the children's mother had sold the family apartment in Baghdad to pay a neighbour to smuggle them out of the country. They had left with only the clothes they were wearing and whatever they could fit beneath their dresses. No personal belongings for fear of being stopped by a police patrol. After crossing the border she and her daughters travelled by train to Pakistan, then to Jakarta where they applied for visas to join her husband in Australia. She filled in forms and was advised the matter would be considered. It seemed nobody had thought to tell her that for people on temporary protection visas in Australia a family reunion was no longer possible. It was also apparent from a report that this mother had begged to be allowed to disembark from the boat, but had been prevented by the police.

Kate finally accepted further sleep was out of the question. She felt thirsty, and pouring herself a glass of water she took it out to the side verandah. It was a still, warm night. There was a sky full of stars, and she could see the distant glow of the city's lights emanating from a thousand brightly lit and empty offices. In one of the trees behind her house a night bird was softly calling.

It was so peaceful. Impossible to imagine the terror of those final moments, the sea sweeping everyone overboard. She knew there were nearly one hundred and fifty children, but in her mind she could only see the three little Iraqi girls.

What kind of a world was it, where people like her unpleasant military neighbour could gain some perverse satisfaction from the death of those three children? And what sort of life would they have had here, she wondered, if the boat had managed to reach Christmas Island? Years in a detention centre? Years of ill ­treatment and abuse? Or would they have been reunited with their father who was now grieving so deeply? She wanted to believe they might have been given a chance to belong here, like she now belonged. But she had come at a far kinder time, and under different circumstances.

And yet . . . it had not always been easy.

Growing up had been full of cruelty at first: the malicious names, the bullying and constant scorn. The fear she had experienced in the school playground, trying to hide from the other kids in the eleven 0' clock break, where freed from the teacher's gaze they could vent their intolerance.

 Hey . . . wog! Yeah, you!

Don't try to run away - we mean you!

Yeah . . . how did you get here?

Yeah, how?

And why did you come?

What was wrong with your own country?

When are you gonna go back there?

Soon, we hope. We don't want yer here!

Or far worse, the remembered trauma of lunchtime.

What's that horrible muck you got in yer schoolbag?

Jeeze, it stinks.

Crikey, what a pong.

We thought somebody had let off a fart.

Phew!

Crumbs, how can you eat smelly foreign stuff like that?

No, she didn't want to think about those days.

Contemplate instead that photo, look at the youngest of the sisters. I was six years old, the same age as her, Kate thought. Rather awed by the sea, by its immensity, the way it extended to the horizon and so far beyond . . . awed and a bit frightened of it at times, like she must have been. And almost sailing across the same stretch of ocean.

But mine, Kate thought, had been a very different journey.