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later, Rose and Tor stood in a thumping wind on A deck clinging to each other. The seagulls that had followed them from Tilbury were, one by one, turning to go home.
    Rose’s new coat suddenly ballooned above her head, making them both laugh a little too wildly.
    “Are you all right?” Tor said. Rose looked as if she’d been crying.
    “Yes, Tor, I’m fine—excited— really. But I do think I’ll go down to the cabin now and unpack. What about you?”
    “I’ll be down in five minutes,” said Tor. “I’m about to throw my corset into the drink.”
    Rose scrunched up her eyes and tried to laugh. “Your mother will kill you.”
    “She can’t swim,” said Tor, flashing her great headlamp eyes. “ Shame. ”
     
    The corset. Her mother had brought a new one up to Tor’s room while she was packing and laid it on the bed like a shriveled pink baby.
    “I brought it back from Paris,” her mother whispered, “as a surprise. It’s called a waspy and makes your waist comme ça. ” She’d given a silly conspiratorial smile and held her hands in a tiny circle. “If you don’t wear it under your peach crêpe de chine it really will look like a rag, and I warn you, Ci Ci Mallinson is very, very smart,” she’d said, bringing up their dragon hostess in Bombay yet again.
    And in spite of all her good intentions not to row beforeshe left, Tor had raised her voice and said, “Mummy, nobody wears them now,” which of course was not true, and then she’d added illogically, “Besides, if my brains are melting in the heat I shan’t be able to.”
    For a second, Tor had expected to be struck across the face, her mother could be free with her fists when riled, but all she’d said was “Oh, pouf.” She’d waved her away with her hand like some sort of nasty fly, and Tor had seen pure contempt in her eyes, which in a way was worse than anger. Be fat and ugly then, her mother might as well have added, I give up.
     
    “Darling.” A wan-looking Rose joined her on the deck again. “This is so stupid, but I can’t find Miss Holloway, or our cabin—they all look the same to me.”
    She was trying hard to smile and keep the wobble out of her voice, but poor Rose was in quite a state, Tor could see that. At school, Rose had always been the calmly efficient one, packing Tor’s pencils and finding forgotten homework; now Tor was the one holding Rose’s hand as they wove their way down the deck, both feeling slightly nauseous. As the wind drew them in a sucking motion toward the steps, she saw the strange boy who’d been with Miss Holloway earlier, sitting on his own on a deck chair. He was staring out to sea and, at the same time, tapping his foot rhythmically as though he was listening to a piece of music.
    “Oh, hello,” said Rose, “we’re looking for Miss Holloway. Have you any idea where she is?”
    “Not the foggiest,” he said. “Sorry.” He turned away from them and looked intently at the sea again.
    “Gosh, how rude, ” Rose said as they walked down the stairs toward the purser’s office. “I jolly well hope we don’t have to eat every meal with him.”
    “We don’t,” Tor said firmly. “Because I won’t. I’ll talk to Miss Viva Holloway about it. I’ll make some excuse.”
    At the bottom of the steps, a brick-faced colonel was giving orders to a tiny lascar seaman who was struggling with his trunk: “Left hand down, hard at it, jolly good, well done!” A smart woman was checking her lipstick in a mirror and saying to a small boy, “Yes, it is rough but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
    It would take them all a while to settle in.
     
    “I’m afraid we’ve been very silly and lost our keys,” Rose told the purser, who was instantly charmed by her. Rose had that effect on men: a dewy softness, a tentative confiding air that made them melt. He said he was going off duty but would take them down to their cabins. He led them past the bar where a band was playing “Ain’t She