The Girl Who Came Home - a Titanic Novel by Hazel Gaynor

There was no need for either of them to talk.
    Eventually, the clock on the mantelpiece chimed midday, the first chime startling them both and causing them to laugh.
    Grace got up then and walked through into the kitchen. ‘Are you ready for another cup of tea yet? I’m gasping!’
    Maggie looked up and smiled. ‘Yes dear. That would be lovely. And Grace…’
    ‘ Yeah?’ Grace popped her head back around the doorframe.
    ‘ Have you called that newspaper editor of yours yet?’
    ‘ Not yet.’
    ‘ Well, you should y’know. I think he might just be interested in my little story. Do you?’ She winked at Grace and started to put everything back into her small case. She imagined, for a moment, a small packet of letters, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with a fraying piece of string, and wondered where they had gone that night. She thought about the man who had written them.
    ‘ What day of the week is it Grace?’
    ‘ It’s Wednesday Maggie,’ Grace shouted back over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘Why?
    Maggie smiled to herself. ‘No reason. I just wondered.’

CHAPTER 10 - New York, 11 th April 1912

    Catherine Kenny placed her empty teacup carefully on the saucer and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, the rhythmic tick, tick, tick a comforting constant in her perfectly ordered, peaceful home. If she had the hours of time difference correct, Katie would be sailing by now. She wondered how her young sister was feeling, having never been on an ocean liner before, or on the ocean for that matter.
    She looked into her teacup, a cursory glance over the scattered leaves showing, she noted with relief, nothing remarkable. Reading the tealeaves was a bit of a tradition in their family. She remembered her grandmother pointing out the vague patterns and images to her. It had entranced Catherine as an impressionable young child, although she was never quite sure whether her Granny was pulling her leg or could actually foresee the things she claimed to see in the leaves. As she had grown up and witnessed various predictions come true, she’d started to take it a bit more seriously and took pride in reading the leaves herself now, although she was yet to predict anything successfully and often wished she had paid more attention to her Granny’s mutterings.
    She stood up to look in the large mirror over the fireplace while she fiddled with the tiny buttons on the high collar of her blouse. She found the tightness around her throat mildly discomforting, hence her reluctance to fasten the very last buttons until it was time to leave. She considered her reflection in the mirror; she looked a little tired, older than her thirty four years. She wondered how she would look to Katie and how Katie would look to her, nearly twenty-four years old and no doubt with an enviable lust for life and an even more enviable, healthy complexion, both of which came from a life spent outdoors.
    Carrying her breakfast things through to the small kitchen of her one bedroom, East Side apartment, Catherine filled the sink to rinse them through. As she swirled the soapy water around with the dishcloth, washing her teacup, saucer, bowl, plate and spoon methodically, it occurred to her that Katie might not have boarded the ship at all. She’d sent money home to Ireland once before for Katie’s passage but, by all accounts, their parents had decided to spend the money on a cow rather than on the intended ticket to America. The regular discussions about Katie coming to America to join her sister had lessened in the intervening months and it was only recently, when several others from Ballysheen, her good friends Peggy and Maggie included, had begun to purchase their tickets, that Katie’s interest had surfaced again.
    The two sisters had exchanged letters regularly over the years, Catherine enjoying hearing about news from home and Katie enjoying Catherine’s descriptions of her life in America. Tell me about the motor cars she would ask,