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

He pushed me through the crowd to a lifeboat. I didn’t want to go without him, but he said I must and that he’d get on another boat.’

She looked down at her hands for a moment then back at Martin’s mother. ‘I didn’t know then that there were no more boats. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, love.’ Mrs Seward dropped to her knees besides Emma’s chair and wrapped her arms around her. ‘You’re not to go blaming yourself. It’s no one’s fault, other than the White Star Line for saying the ship was unsinkable and not providing enough lifeboats. I’m glad you were with him that last day. I’m glad he met you and was happy. And I am so, so sorry you did not have more time together.’ She took Emma’s face in her hands. ‘I think I should have liked to have you as a daughter-in-law.’

Emma hugged her back. ‘Thank you. And I would have liked to call you Mother.’

It was a different reaction than she’d had from her own ma, she thought. Ma did blame her, somehow, for not saving Ruby. Though what more Emma could have done for her sister she did not know.

She stayed an hour with Mrs Seward, talking through memories of Martin, crying together, laughing together, and leaving her with promises to come again, one day when Mr Seward would be home from work and when Martin’s sister could be there too, with her little ones. She left Salisbury knowing she had made lifelong friends and feeling glad that she had taken the trouble to visit.

A few days later Emma had found herself a new job – back at the Star Hotel where she’d worked before going to sea. It offered less pay, but was on blessed dry land. She was employed to take room service orders to guests, turn down their beds, and tidy their rooms. Much as she had done before starting work on the Olympic. Sometimes it felt as though the last year had never happened. But then she’d remember that Ruby was gone, and Martin was gone, and nothing could ever be the same.

At home, life went on much as before. The only thing that seemed different to previous visits home was that there was no longer any need to worry about what Ruby was up to.

Emma worried about Ma instead. She seemed older, somehow diminished. Greyer and quieter. It was almost impossible to raise a smile from her. She still took in mending and washing, even though now Lily was older and no longer suffering from bouts of ill health Ma could have gone out to work.

‘No, lovey,’ she said, when Emma suggested it once, thinking that if Ma could get out of the house and meet people it might lift her spirits. ‘I prefer to stay in my own home. There’s memories of my Ruby in every corner here, and I want to hang onto them.’

Increasingly, it was Emma and Lily who did the shopping and ran other errands. Ma was isolating herself from everyone. She would sit in the kitchen with a bit of sewing, peering at it with her fading eyesight, or in the back scullery washing clothes, and she’d ask the girls to deliver the sewing or laundry back to the customer when it was done. ‘I don’t want to see them, lovey,’ she’d say. ‘I can’t stand their looks of pity. It breaks me.’ As the weeks went by she seemed to shrink still further into herself, her eyes dark and sunken, her face gaunt and the worry lines deeper than ever.

‘What’s happening to her?’ Lily asked Emma, as they walked home from the shops with a basket of groceries on Emma’s day off. ‘What sickness is this?’

‘Grief,’ Emma replied. She had felt it herself – a black cloud that constantly threatened to envelop her, that made her want to simply stay in bed and let the world continue without her.

After a few months, the time felt right for Emma to move into Ruby’s room and allow Lily more space. She enlisted Lily’s help to clear out Ruby’s things. It was heartbreaking going through her clothes, keeping a few things that she or Lily thought they might wear, packaging up the rest for charity. Ma came upstairs while they were clearing the room and stood for a minute watching them.

‘Is there anything you … would like to keep?’ Emma asked, but Ma shook her head.

‘I have my memories of my darling girl. And her photograph. They are all I need.’ Ma turned away, and went to her own room, closing the door.

She was doing that frequently these days – taking to her bed in the middle of the day, napping. The grief was consuming her, bit by bit. Emma stared for a moment at Ma’s closed door, wondering whether to go in, offer tea, sit with her for a while. But when she’d done this before, she’d been brushed away. Ma blamed her still, she thought, for Ruby’s death. She’d never say so outright, but Emma could see it, in her eyes. She should have done more. Somehow she should have kept Ruby safe, got her on a lifeboat, brought her home. Ma was wasting away, grieving for Ruby and it was all Emma’s fault. She returned to Ruby’s room, where Lily was cleaning inside the now-emptied wardrobe.

‘It’ll be nice for you to have a room of your own again,’ Lily said, and Emma smiled in response. ‘I’m sorry Ruby and I weren’t better friends,’ Lily went on. ‘She never seemed to take much notice of me. I think she resented that I needed so much of Ma’s attention when I was sick. And I was jealous of her spending time with you – I wanted you all to myself. I was just a child.’

Emma hugged her, unable to answer without more weeping. Lily was still a child, but she’d grown up so much in such a short time.

The following day Emma was leaving work when