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

in her own letters, and the buildings that reach into the sky. And, is it really true that the theatres on Broadway can seat thousands of people at a time?
    The latest letter from Katie had arrived just a few weeks ago, stating that she would like to be able to travel over with the others from Ballysheen, it seeming like a good opportunity to be amongst friends, rather than making the long journey all on her own. Of course, Catherine had sent the money immediately, including with it a note to Katie and their mother assuring them both that she would meet Katie herself at the docks in New York. I am, after all, quite keen to see this ‘Titanic’ for myself , she’d written. As a post script, and fearing that they might think it too late to buy a ticket from the local shipping agent and spend the money on another cow instead, she’d emphasised that Katie would be able to buy a ticket in Queenstown, or on the ship itself.
    Assuming Katie was on board with the Ballysheen group, Catherine imagined that she would be quite excited. With so many familiar faces from home around her, she was sure that any doubts and anxieties about the journey would be soon forgotten. She might even stop fretting, for a while at least, about her younger brother William who she’d been reluctant to leave behind. William had been deaf from birth and had always been Katie’s favourite among the six brothers in their family. They seemed to share a special bond which allowed Katie to communicate with him much better than anyone else in the family was able to. She understood him when no one else could and she was worried about what would happen to him now that she wasn’t going to be around.
    For her own part, Catherine was very much looking forward to seeing her beloved sister again. It had been over three years since she had seen her last, before she had made the trip across the Atlantic herself. Travelling with her friend Maura Byrne, theirs had been a quiet, discreet departure from Ballysheen. Nobody even knew the name of the ship they were to travel on; it had never occurred to anyone to ask. How different Katie’s experience would have been, leaving amid such a fuss and flurry of activity as so many homes waved off a loved one and to be sailing on the most celebrated ship man had ever built, a ship whose name everyone knew.
    Catherine pictured her sister now, sure that she would make the most of every minute on board. Unlike her own reserved, practical demeanour, Katie was a confident, impulsive girl with all kinds of fanciful notions running around her head; a trip on the world’s largest and most luxurious ocean liner with some of the world’s richest businessmen would no doubt have her planning her own wedding to a rich socialite before she had even disembarked!
    She glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall. It was only three days until Katie would celebrate her 24 th birthday. She always enjoyed a party and celebrating a birthday aboard a ship would be the perfect excuse for singing and merry-making if ever there was one. Yes, Katie would enjoy America, Catherine thought to herself as she put on her coat and her hat; in fact, America would enjoy Katie.

    She left her apartment block and, crossing the road, walked the short distance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line at South Ferry. Although the elevated line took longer, she preferred not to take the subway system, being slightly claustrophobic as she was. The idea of speeding along in a small, underground train made her feel dizzy so she preferred to travel over ground by the El for her day of work as a domestic at the Walker-Brown’s residence.
    As she took her familiar journey across the city that morning, along Greenwich Street and Battery Place to Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan and on to Ninth Avenue in midtown and finally on to Columbus Avenue and the leafy suburbs of the Upper West Side, it occurred to Catherine that she might take a trip to Macy’s one evening after work