Sometimes I wanted to lie in my bed, feeling limp and tired, too weak to think of anything. There was a certain comfort in that. I was lying in limbo. I could take no action. I was too ill to do anything.

Aunt Sophie was constantly there. So was Lily. There were flowers in the room. I believe I knew who had sent them. I did not see him.

Though I know he came for once or twice I heard his voice.

There was a time when I thought I heard Aunt Sophie say: “It’s better not. It might upset her.” Then I heard his voice pleading.

I wondered if he would come in spite of Aunt Sophie, but he did not.

He would be remembering that scene which had taken place before I had run off through the storm.

I was getting better. They were trying to make me eat.

I had grown very thin, said Lily. That was no way to be, but if anyone knew how to tempt an appetite, she did.

She would bring some tasty dish to my bedside.

“Now eat this up or you’ll worry your poor Aunt Sophie into her grave.” So I would eat it.

As I grew better I went on asking myself what I must do. I was very uncertain. I could not imagine life without Crispin. Sometimes I felt weakly acquiescent. I wanted to let him take care of everything. Then I thought of what he was prepared to do and keep secret from me, and I said to myself: I feel as if I shall never truly know him. There are things he is holding back. It is like a screen which comes down between us. It was not only this. There was something else.

Aunt Sophie was sitting by my bed.

She said: “You’re getting better. My word, you have given us a fright.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My dear, I wish I could have borne it for you.”

I knew she meant more than my illness.

“What am I going to do, Aunt Sophie?” I said.

“Only you can decide. You can go the way he wants, or…”

“I shouldn’t be truly married to him.”

That’s so. “

“If there were children … We should never be sure when she was coming back.”

“That is a point.”

“And yet, I can never be happy without him.”

“Life changes, my dear. If you have doubts, you should hesitate.

That’s why I think you should get away from here. When you are close you can’t see things clearly. This is something you can’t hurry into.

You need time. It’s wonderful what time can do. “

“I feel so tired,” I said.

“Aunt Sophie, I want to listen to him. No one will know. We could go through with this.”

“It is not lawful. If you had been in ignorance of the fact that he had a wife living, you could not be blamed. But you would go to the altar knowing that he has a wife living.”

“I must not do it.”

“What you must do is get away and think. You would not be well enough yet. We’ll have to talk about it … again and again. I know you can’t face losing him. I understand well how you feel, my dear. Perhaps we shall find some way.”

It was a few days later when the letter came.

Aunt Sophie sat by my bed.

She said: “It’s from your father.”

I started up, staring at her. I saw the hope in her eyes.

“I wrote to him right at the start of all this. I guessed how it would go.. It takes a long time for letters to get here. He must have sat down and written right away. He wants you to go to him.”

To go to him? Where? “

“I’ll tell you what he says.

“This place is right on its own. The rest of the world seems far away. There’ll be sunshine and everything will be different. A new way of life, something you have never dreamed of before. Here she can think and perhaps see which way she has to go.

It’s time I met my daughter. It must be nearly twenty years since I last saw her. I am sure it is right for her. Persuade her, Sophie . ”

I was aghast. I had wanted so much to see my father, and now he was suggesting that I go to this remote island.

She dropped the letter and looked at me steadily.

“You must go,” she said.

“How?”

“You take a ship at Tilbury or Southampton, somewhere like that, and you just sail away.”

“Where is this island?”

“Casker’s Island? Almost on the other side of the world.”

“This sounds preposterous.”

“It’s not impossible, Freddie. You have to think about it. I see it as an answer. You should know your father.”

“If he had wanted to see me he could have done so before this.”

“He wouldn’t while your mother was alive, and after that … well, he has been far away. But now you need help and he is there to give it.”

“But suddenly to be presented with a proposition like this …”

“It’s what you need. You want something to come between you and all this uncertainty. You have to come to a decision and you’ll do it better away from it all.”

“So far!”

“The farther the better.”

“Aunt Sophie … suppose I do go … you’d come with me?”

She hesitated. Then she said firmly: “No, there is too much for me to do here; He didn’t suggest that I should go.”

“You mean I should go alone? I thought you liked my father.”

“I did. I do. But I know this is not the time.”

She had turned her head away because she did not want me to read her thoughts.

As for myself, I felt bewildered. This was such a sudden proposition.

The idea of leaving England, of going off to some remote island, and, as Aunt Sophie said, on the other side of the world, in those first moments seemed too wild to be taken seriously.

Casker’s Island. Where was it? It was just a name. And to see my father, whom I could not remember, but who over the years had kept up what I supposed was a desultory correspondence with Aunt Sophie, in which she gave him news of his daughter!

They had been good friends in the past and the friendship had never really died. She had always insisted that he was interested in me, but he had never made any effort to see me. Was that due to the animosity between him and my mother? But now my mother was dead and he was on some remote island. I had thought I should never meet him. And now he was inviting me to Casker’s Island to get right away to consider which way I could turn.

Aunt Sophie brought maps to my bedside.

“Here it is,” she said.

“This is Australia. See this little speck in the ocean? That’s Casker’s Island. Too small and insignificant to be marked on some maps. Look, there are several other little dots. That would mean other islands. Just imagine being there, with all that sea around you!”

“It would be a very strange experience.”

“That is what you need just now. You need to get right away to something entirely new.”

“Alone?” I said.

“You’ll be with your father.”

“I shall have to think of getting there. It’s so far away.”

“These things can be arranged. People say that a sea change does you all the good in the world.”

“I am so unsure.”

“Of course you are. It takes some thinking of. He so much wants you to go, Freddie.”

“After all this time? How can he?”

“I’ve read it in his letters. He has been waiting for so long. I know it is best for you.”

“If you came too …”

“That would be a reminder. You want a complete change. I think you are beginning to think about it seriously.”

Crispin came. I held out my hands to him.

He took them and kissed them fervently. I made up my mind then. If I stayed I should do as he wanted. I thought of our life together, living under the shadow. When would she come again asking for money? It was inevitable that she would. It would always be there that threat, that fear. It would spoil our chances of happiness.

Passionately lilt” I wanted children; I believed he did too. What of them? And yet, how could I let him go? He looked so sad, so bewildered. That pleading look in his eyes unnerved me.

“I have been so worried,” he said.

“I know.”

“You ran out in the rain. You left me. And then they wouldn’t let me come to see you.”

“I am better now, Crispin, and I am going away.”

He looked stricken.

“Going away?”

“I’ve thought a lot about it and I think it’s best. I’ve got to get away for a time. I’ve got to think about this.”

“No,” he said, ‘you must not go. “

“I have to, Crispin. I don’t know what to do.”

“If you love me ” I do. But I have to think about this. I have to know what is for the best. “

“You’ll come back.”

“I am going to my father.”

He looked astonished.

“He lives far away, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I shall be able to think there.”

“Don’t go! What shall I do? Think of me.”

“I am thinking of us both. I’m thinking of the future.”

I do not want to dwell on that scene. It hurts too much even now. He pleaded with me. I almost gave way. But the conviction was strong in me. I had to go.

Aunt Sophie wrote to my father and I enclosed a letter to him in with hers. I wanted to see him. After all these years he would become a real person to me not just a fantasy.

Aunt Sophie threw herself wholeheartedly into preparations though I knew how sad she was that I was going away. I caught her with tears in her eyes and there were times when we wept together. She said: “But it’s right. I know it’s right.”

Tamarisk came to see me.

She said: “So you are going away?”

“Yes.”

“To the other side of the world?”

“More or less.”

“I know something has gone wrong with you and Crispin. It’s because of that, I suppose.”