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night, he brought her odds and ends of food: bread rolls, pieces of cheese, chocolates and bits of fruit. She repaid him in the way she was used to paying for things. It was a pity Gertie had had to see them.
    At that moment, Gertie came into the cabin alone.
    ‘Where’s Annemarie?’ Olive enquired.
    ‘She gone for walk with Rowena, nice girl who came search for Mollie to play cards. Such pity about Mollie.’ Her round face grew sad. ‘Ship doctor have digitalis. No need for her go and miss boat.’
    ‘Yes, it’s a pity,’ Olive agreed. She was genuinely sorry for Mollie who’d been really nice to her. Unlike Gertie, unlike most people, Mollie hadn’t looked at her if she were a piece of dirt. Even so, it seemed as if Mollie missing the boat was going to turn out to her advantage, so it wasn’t such a pity, after all.
    An officer, ever such a handsome chap, had come looking for Annemarie bringing the news about her sister. She’d been too stupefied to take it in and Olive wondered if the girl was all there. Gertie had been present and had taken charge. ‘ I nurse, I look after child. She need drops from doctor, she not have regular heart.’
    Since then, Gertie had taken Annemarie under her wing, giving her the drops, taking her to see the doctor every day, urging her to eat. Today was the first time she’d had a proper meal. At least, she’d gone for a meal: whether she’d actually eaten it was another matter.
    ‘Did Annemarie eat her breakfast?’ she asked. It had been wrong, dangerous, to get on the wrong side of Gertie. She might remember her threat to report her. Asking after Annemarie seemed to please her.
    Gertie made a face. ‘Only bread and she drink some milk.’
    ‘Oh, well, that should do her some good.’
    ‘Only little good. Mollie say she suffer great shock. Her head all . . . ’ Gertie waved her podgy hands around her own head, leaving Olive to guess what she meant. In a daze, she supposed, all woolly, round the bloody bend.
     
    Had Annemarie been asked, had she been able to understand, she would have agreed with all three of Olive’s guesses. Ever since the night her father had lain on top of her, causing her great pain, she’d been in a daze and, in the rare moments when she could think clearly, was convinced she must be going mad. Then she would retreat into the world she’d invented for herself, a world in which nothing horrid happened, a make-believe world full of smoke and clouds and thick forests in which she could hide. It was a world without danger where she was determined to stay for as long as she could.
    That Annemarie was only faintly aware of another Annemarie existing outside her make-believe world, a terrified, frightened girl who hated being touched or spoken to, who blindly did what she was told, who was too confused to know who or where she was. Words had imprinted themselves on her woolly mind: New York; Aunt Maggie; Hazel. ‘ We’re going to see Hazel ,’ Mollie had said. Mollie was the girl’s sister. She didn’t mind when Mollie held her hand and took her to strange places. ‘ It’s all right, sis. It’s only a ship ,’ Mollie had said.
    But Mollie had disappeared and now another girl was holding her hand, talking to her, taking her somewhere, not knowing that Annemarie was about to retreat into her other world, hide inside one of the clouds, or bury herself in the trees where no one could see her and no one would speak. It was the only place she felt safe.
     
    A plan was slowly hatching in Olive’s sharp brain. The Queen Maia was more than halfway to America and, last night, Ashley had given her some bad news. ‘The day we land,’ he’d told her, ‘you’d better get back to steerage in good time. Your name’s down on the manifest: if you’re missing, there’ll be hell to play. The ship’ll be searched and you’ll be sent back to where you came from.’
    ‘Bloody hell!’ Olive swore.
    ‘What’s wrong with being an immigrant? It’s what