The Lost Sister, Kathleen McGurl [best desktop ebook reader txt] 📗

over to England. Will take a few days – travelling via QM2 as it seemed most appropriate. Will dock in Southampton on Friday. Hoping we can meet soon after that if you are free?

She quickly replied: Wonderful way to travel – QM2 is a marvellous ship! Am having small house-warming party on Saturday. You’re invited! She added her address and grinned when he quickly responded with a thumbs up. It would be fun to meet him and swap stories about their grandmothers.

On Monday the postman brought Harriet a clutch of ‘welcome to your new home’ cards. One from Sheila, one from Sally who could have brought it by hand on moving day or sent it with Charlie, but who’d thought (as she wrote in the card), it’d be fun for Harriet to get some post at her new address. And the third was from Matthew. They’d been in regular contact via email since she’d written that first letter to him, and they’d spoken on the phone a couple of times. In the card he’d written that he would be in Bournemouth a couple of days later, and would she like to meet up? He suggested the bar of the hotel in the town centre where he was booked in – it was one Harriet knew well, only a couple of miles from her old house. She emailed him immediately to accept.

She dressed on Wednesday in a loose dress and a casual jacket – nothing too formal but a step up from her usual jeans and fleece combinations. She drove to the hotel, arriving in good time for the afternoon tea he’d suggested. Matthew was already waiting for her, sitting at a small table for two in a bay window at the far end of the hotel bar. He was reading a newspaper – the Guardian, she noted, the same one he’d always read – and he hadn’t spotted her yet. She paused for a moment while still around ten metres away. There he was. Matthew. Her big brother who’d always looked out for her, whom she’d worshipped. Whom she’d missed, so much. He looked up, peering over the top of his glasses, and grinned when he saw her, folding his paper and standing up.

‘Harriet! I can’t believe it – after so long!’

She walked quickly across the bar, and as she reached him she held out her arms and fell into his as though they met up every week. He squeezed her tightly, and she kept her face buried for a moment against his chest, while she brought her emotions into check. ‘Matthew! My dear old brother!’

‘If I’m old, then so are you,’ he said, as he released her and they sat down.

‘I’m refusing to count 70 as old,’ she said with a laugh.

‘Quite right too! Well, shall we order? I thought we could have a proper afternoon tea – little sandwiches, cakes, and scones. My treat.’

‘Sounds delightful!’ Harriet was thrilled by the way they seemed to be slipping straight back into the friendship and closeness they’d had as children and teenagers. It was possible, then, to pick up and rebuild a relationship that had been allowed to founder.

They chatted for hours – updating each other on their lives over the last many years. Matthew’s long-term partner had died a couple of years earlier – not long before John. Harriet’s heart went out to him as he talked about his loss. She’d never met Matthew’s partner – Greta had just been a name on the Christmas cards – but he’d loved her and lost her.

‘We’ve both missed out on getting to know each other’s partners properly,’ Matthew said. ‘I’m sorry for that. It was my fault.’

‘Let’s not talk about fault,’ Harriet said, reaching a hand across the table to him. ‘We both could have tried harder.’

She invited Matthew to her house-warming party at the weekend. ‘Sally will be there, and your great-nephew Jerome. Please come. They’d love to see you.’

‘I’d like to do that,’ Matthew said.

Harriet smiled. ‘There’s one other family member who should be there on Saturday too. A second cousin we didn’t know we had.’ She updated Matthew on her family tree research, and how she’d come across Robert on the Ancestry site. ‘To think we never knew anything about Ruby’s existence! To be honest, I can’t remember many of Gran’s stories. I wish I’d listened more. I know she talked a lot about her time working on the Olympic but she never mentioned her sisters had been on the Titanic. I only really remember her talking about events from the 1920s on.’

Matthew nodded. ‘I do remember her stories – probably more than you as I was interested in history. But she never talked about the Titanic or Ruby. She talked about Emma a lot – I think as a young child she’d worshipped Emma and then of course Emma saved her life.’

Harriet frowned. ‘I vaguely remember something about that but not the full story – do you know it?’

‘It was on the Britannic,’ Matthew said, then paused as he took a sip of his tea – their third cup of the afternoon. ‘It was used as a hospital ship during the First World War, and they were both working on board when it hit a German mine and sank. Their lifeboat was being sucked towards the propellers so they jumped overboard, but Gran couldn’t swim. Great-Aunt Emma kept her afloat, towed her away from the ship and got her into another lifeboat but she was exhausted and somehow ended up drowning.’

‘That is so sad.’ Harriet was silent for a moment, imagining Gran in the second lifeboat, knowing her sister had saved her at the cost of her own life. ‘So selfless of Emma. But how can she have got Gran into another lifeboat then drowned herself? Could no one have pulled her into it?’

‘Gran was a bit unsure what happened, but she remembered lots of shouting, and an oar being lost, and Emma floating away face down, unconscious.