You’re a good girl, Brenda, Matron had said, putting on a smile that was worse than one of her glares. May God go with you. She would need His company, all right, she thought mournfully now: there was tonight on the boat, then the train journey tomorrow to Southampton, and then five more days at sea, and then what? She had never been out of the country before, except once, when she was little and her father took the family on a day trip to the Isle of Man.

A sleek black motorcar was edging its way through the crowds of passengers going toward the boat. It stopped when it was still a good ten yards away from her, and a woman got out at the passenger side with a canvas bag in her hand and a bundle in a blanket in the crook of her other arm. She was not young, sixty if she was a day, but was dressed as if she were half that, in a gray suit with a narrow, calf-length skirt belted tightly at the waist, her little potbelly sticking out under the belt, and a pillbox hat with a bit of blue veil that came down below her nose. She walked forward over the flagstones, unsteady in stiletto heels, her painted-on mouth pursed in a smile. Her eyes were small and black and sharp.

“Miss Ruttledge?” she said. “My name is Moran.” Her fancy accent was as fake as everything else about her. She handed over the bag. “The baby’s things are in there, with her papers-give them to the purser when you get on board at Southampton, he’ll know who you are.” She examined Brenda closely, making slits of her little black eyes. “Are you all right? You look pale.”

Brenda said she was fine, that she had been up late, that was all. Miss Moran, or Mrs., or whatever she was, smiled thinly.

“The parting glass, eh?” She held out the bundle in the blanket. “Here you are-don’t drop it.” She laughed shortly, then frowned at herself and said, “Sorry.”