The Lost Sister by Kathleen McGurl (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

Somehow she must have slept, for when she woke there was a cooling mug of tea near her, and Caroline was nowhere to be seen. Emma guessed she’d had other people to help. The Carpathia’s resources and crew must be stretched to their limits. It didn’t seem as though there was any other rescue ship in the area. She gulped down the tea and decided to resume her search. Maybe while she’d slept more lifeboats might have been picked up.

She toured the decks and the requisitioned cabins once more, asking, pleading, and being answered only by sadly shaken heads and haunted eyes. All of the Titanic’s lifeboats had been picked up and accounted for, she was told, including the collapsibles. And although the ship was still checking for survivors in the water there was no real hope of finding any. ‘Is there a list, at all, of the people you’ve picked up?’ she asked one of the Carpathia’s officers.

‘Of course, miss, have you not given your name?’

She had; she’d been asked for it when she boarded. ‘I’m looking for my sister. Ruby Higgins. She was a stewardess like me …’

‘Come with me, miss,’ the officer said, and led her to an office where a sheaf of papers lay on a desk – the names of the Titanic survivors. He ran his finger down each page, as Emma waited.

‘Please, can you look for Martin Seward too,’ she asked. The officer glanced up and began going through the list once more, from the beginning. When he reached the end of the last page he looked up at her and shook his head, compassion in his eyes.

‘I’m very sorry. Those names are not on the list.’

Once more her legs gave way, and she crumpled to the floor. The officer ran round to her, scooped her up, and carried her to one of the sick-bay cabins where he laid her gently on a bed. ‘There, miss – the doctor will come and see you soon. Try to stay strong. It’s a terrible thing, such a terrible thing to have happened.’

He left her then, alone with her thoughts, her anguish. Ruby, dead. Her promise to Ma broken. Martin, dead. Her dreams for the future shattered. Might it have been better for her to have died, too?

But then no one would have gone back to Ma and Lily, to tell them what happened. And Martin’s folk, in Salisbury. She’d go and see them too, when she got back, she decided. She could at least keep that promise, the one she’d made to Martin. Maybe she could offer some crumb of comfort, telling them of his bravery in those last hours, how he had worked hard to save as many passengers as he could, and had pushed her forward to get a place on the last proper lifeboat.

Ma would find no comfort, she knew. Emma would not be able to tell her anything of Ruby’s last hours. She had no idea where her sister had been, that evening. Or why had she not come up to the deck when the Titanic was sinking. Why, oh why, had Ruby not got herself into a lifeboat? She remembered her sister saying she might as well throw herself overboard. Emma had thought she was joking, but now she wondered. Had Ruby perhaps not attempted to save herself on purpose? Had she felt it was better to allow herself, and her unborn child, drown as a way out of her mess? Emma could not believe it of her sister. Ruby had always been so vibrant, so beautiful, full of life and energy. No. It was not true. Ruby had been headstrong, foolish at times, but being pregnant would have made her want to live. Despite it all, she had wanted her baby. The shawl packed in her luggage was proof of that, wasn’t it?

Ruby must have been trapped somewhere on the Titanic, unable to get to the boat deck. If only Emma had searched more areas.

At last, after all those hours of searching the Titanic, of being adrift at sea in the lifeboat, of being on the Carpathia hobbling around on swollen feet as her hopes gradually dwindled away, at last Emma gave in to the emotions that engulfed her and cried, wrapping her arms around her head, turning to the wall and sobbing, her body shaking, head pounding, throat raw. The tears were useless, pointless – they brought no one back to life, they brought Emma no relief from the pain of her loss. But they eventually allowed her to sleep, a long, dreamless sleep of exhaustion, that lasted until dawn broke the following morning.

It was two more days before the Carpathia docked at New York. Two days in which Emma couldn’t help but keep searching the ship for Ruby and Martin, asking all the Titanic crew members she came across (so few!) if they’d seen or heard any more of them. Two days in which she found herself hoping that maybe there’d been another ship in the area that might have picked up survivors. Two days in which the faces of Ruby and Martin were always at the front of her mind.

Caroline came to see her a couple of times, but was busy doing what she could for other Titanic survivors. Emma spent most of her time with Mary, tending to her friend’s injuries as best she could. The mood amongst those who’d been rescued was subdued, as almost everyone was missing friends and family.

‘What will it be like when we reach New York?’ Emma said, to Mary. ‘I suppose the news will have reached them there. I suppose there will be lots of relatives of the American passengers, all hoping their loved ones are on board. Will they know, do you think, who’s survived and who’s been lost?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mary said. ‘Maybe they will have used the Marconi equipment to tell New York who’s on