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

my best wishes to my nephew. I honestly hope and pray they’ll find a donor for him – tell Sally that, for me, will you? Bye then.’

And as usual, she hung up without waiting to hear Harriet say goodbye too.

Harriet sat staring at her phone for a couple of minutes, as if wondering whether it might ring again. It remained silent. At least they’d had a chat. They’d even laughed a little. And she’d heard a bit about what her granddaughters were like. She could picture them. She chuckled to herself imagining Davina coping with a stroppy teenage Autumn, receiving a taste of her own medicine. Maybe though, having been like that herself, she’d do a better job of parenting a difficult teenager than Harriet had.

Later, with another cup of coffee to hand, plus a cheeky chocolate cookie for fortification purposes, Harriet began the research she wanted to do. Ruby Higgins. What was her position on board the Titanic, and had her body been recovered? She searched for a death registration and there was one, from the second quarter of 1912. She’d have to order the death certificate to see exactly what it said.

And then she Googled ‘list of victims of Titanic’ and came across a website – the fabulously named ‘Encyclopedia Titanica’ – which provided just that. Better still, it listed bodies recovered, and which ship had recovered them, plus where the victims had been buried. Ruby was listed as a second-class stewardess, just like Emma, and missing. Her body had not been recovered. Harriet spent a while browsing the lists. There were thumbnail photos beside many of the names, and their ages were given. She was silent as she scrolled through, looking at the photos of young men, middle-aged women, babies. The photos made it all seem so real. These were not just statistics, not just names. They were people, and each loss was a tragedy in its own right.

There was no photo beside Ruby’s name. Clicking on it, Harriet discovered the website listed a brief set of facts about her great-aunt:

Born in Southampton in 1894 to George and Amelia Higgins, the second daughter of three. Ruby Higgins was resident at 49 Albert Road, Northam, when she signed on as a second-class stewardess, and the Titanic voyage was her first. Her body was never recovered. Her sister Emma Higgins survived, and the family later placed a notice in the Southern Daily Echo announcing Ruby’s death.

That was all there was to show for Ruby’s life. Not much, really. Harriet closed her eyes in silent tribute to the great-aunt she’d never known existed. The young girl, who’d been just 18 when her life was cut short in such a tragic way. What might she have become, what could she have achieved in her life? She might have gone on to have children and grandchildren – her grandchildren would have been second cousins to Harriet.

Harriet pondered how Ruby’s last moments would have panned out. She obviously had not been picked up by a lifeboat. Had she been trapped in the ship, or perhaps in the water, trying to stay afloat until she’d perished from the cold? Had she been injured in some way? Had she not managed to get hold of a life jacket and therefore drowned quickly? It was impossible to ever know. Harriet hoped that the end had come quickly and as painlessly as possible. And what of Emma? The website listed her as making it onto a lifeboat and being picked up by the Carpathia along with all the other survivors. Again there was a brief biography of her, but no photo. Harriet wondered whether to copy the photo of the three sisters, snip Ruby’s and Emma’s faces and send them in to the Titanica website, so they too could have a picture by their names.

Emma would have had to go back home to Southampton after her rescue and face her mother and remaining sister, and tell them about Ruby’s death, Harriet realised. They might have asked why she hadn’t stuck by her younger sister and made sure she got on a lifeboat. Had she rushed off to get on an early boat to try to save herself? Harriet didn’t like to think so. She preferred to imagine Emma searching for Ruby, hoping that maybe she’d already got on a lifeboat, before getting on one herself. She was listed as having been on lifeboat number sixteen. In what order had the lifeboats been launched? That might give a clue as to whether she’d just saved herself or tried to search for her sister first.

Harriet ran some more searches, read some Wikipedia articles and eventually found herself browsing books about the Titanic on Amazon. One intrigued her – a memoir by a woman named Violet Jessop, who’d been a first-class stewardess on the Titanic and survived its sinking. She’d also worked on the Olympic, as well as on the third sister ship, the Britannic.

‘Wow,’ Harriet whispered. ‘You survived Titanic’s sinking and then went back to sea. That’s so brave!’ She ordered a copy of the memoir, wondering whether Violet had known her grandmother at all. They’d worked different classes but it was possible they’d come across each other in the crew areas. In any case, it would be fascinating reading a first-hand account of both life at sea as a stewardess, and what it had been like surviving the Titanic disaster.

Harriet jotted down everything she found out, and kept a file of useful online links. The story of the three sisters was taking shape, but as always, the more she found out the more questions she had, and some, she knew, she could never find the answers to.

‘Gran, I wish you could tell me your stories again. Just come into my dreams and whisper in my ear or something,’ Harriet said, to the photo of the three girls. Then she laughed at herself, calling on a long-dead ghost to help her with research. She’d had a long career in