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the subject away from his love life.
    â€˜Sarah called from Athens airport before they got on the plane for Tel Aviv. Sounded like she was full of beans. Peter writes to his mum pretty regularly.’
    Rebecca sometimes read parts from Peter’s letters out loud and Berlin knew she left out any bits that she thought would worry him. And he knew from experience that Peter would have left out the parts that he knew would worry his mother. Berlin had done this himself, telling his fiancée and his grandfather about life on the airfield in England and their training flights, leaving out any mention of the terror of his repeated missions into the hell that was the night sky over German-occupied Europe. From his letters they would never have known he was flying operations, piloting his Lancaster time and again into anti-aircraft fire and night fighters and searchlights. They found out when they received the telegram that said he was posted missing and then later listed as a POW.
    â€˜You reckon Peter’s safe over there? Vietnam, I mean. Never really saw him as the army type, myself.’
    â€˜It was his choice.’ But it hadn’t really been that much of a choice for the boy: six months behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge for breaking and entering and a criminal record for life or, as a favour to his father for his long and faithful service in the police force, a way out by joining the army. Surprisingly, it was Peter who had first suggested the idea. More surprising still, Rebecca had agreed with the boy. She pointed out that the possibility of being conscripted was already looming and as a volunteer he would probably have more options for a trade than a national serviceman who was called up.
    So Berlin had made his case privately to the magistrate, who was sympathetic and agreed to give Peter the option. Berlin had warned the boy to pick a trade like mechanical engineering when he went in and under no circumstances volunteer for the infantry, which would almost certainly mean combat. The little bugger had of course ignored him and was now carrying a rifle somewhere in South Vietnam.
    â€˜They reckon a bit of time in the military can make a man out of a kid. You hold with that?’ Roberts asked.
    â€˜It’s what they reckon. Bob’
The military makes corpses of a lot of people too
, Berlin thought, but he didn’t say that. ‘Let’s get moving, shall we, it’s a fair hike to Brighton and I’ve got the feeling you’re dying to show me just what this car can do.’
    Roberts started the Triumph. He revved the engine twice and then let it settle at idle. Berlin could feel the power of the rumbling engine through his feet pressed against the firewall.

THE VOYAGE
August 1950
    They sent the boy back to London within a month of VE Day and the arrival of the telegram at the farm. His mother was ill with untreated venereal disease and in no condition to take care of him, so he was given into care. He was passed from hand to hand, home to home, orphanage to orphanage and into situations of abuse that ranged from benign neglect to physical and sexual violence. While the overt and constant brutality of the war was now gone, there was anger and shame and bitterness amongst the civilian population from loss of loved ones, and for those who had seen combat a loss of innocence and sometimes with it a loss of compassion and caring.
    When the boy was selected to go to Australia as a child migrant he neither understood nor cared exactly what that meant. In yet another hand-me-down overcoat and struggling with the weight and size of his kitbag he had stumbled up the gangplank of a liner that had been converted to a troopship in 1940 and, at war’s end, converted back. It would be the boy’s home for six weeks and would take him and three dozen other lucky children like him to a promised glorious new life Down Under.
    All ships become a world unto themselves once the lines are