The title is taken from Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" - the whole line goes "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose", which, I think, sums up Mick's situation after losing Nell and leaving France quite well.

However, I have chosen a different title song for this chapter. Mick is not in Paris and it isn't winter, but the mood of the song is certainly how he's feeling.

This story also comes with a nod to John Irving whose latest novel taught me there was that rather effective technique called a duck-under in wrestling. I don't have any interest in wrestling, but this one kind of fascinated me and came in handy for the narrative.

The Pogues – Paris St. Germain

The City of Light is dimmed now by the winter,
No gut full of wine could keep out this frost
We'll shiver and sigh by the ice on the river
Ask the dull heavens, "The hell have we lost?"

My heart's too empty to speak true of sorrow
What's dust is but dust and as dust shall remain
If only I could, I would make it tomorrow,
I'd make it tomorrow where you'd live again

I'll lay myself down in the mist and the heather
I'll lay myself down and I'll wait for your call
The bell rings last orders, we're walking together
While the boulevards burn and crumble and fall
The boulevards burn and crumble and fall

My heart's too empty to speak true of sorrow
What's dust is but dust and as dust shall we fall
The bell rings last orders, we're walking together
While the boulevards burn and crumble and fall
The boulevards burn and crumble and fall
The boulevards burn and crumble and fall


An upbeat waltz echoed through the cobbled side street, issuing from an open door below a wooden sign swinging softly in the evening breeze. It depicted a fat, artlessly painted owl, blinking sleepily, and the words Le Hibou in fancifully squiggly letters.

"Is this the famous place?" I asked Jérémie, cocking my head towards the inviting trapezoid of light spilling on the pavement from the doorway of the dance hall which he'd said was a must-see in his native city of Le Havre.

"Yup!" he confirmed cheerfully, walking inside with the swagger and the broad grin that made girls everywhere swoon by the dozen.

I exchanged a look with Giovanni, the taciturn Italian, who rolled his eyes at our French mate's showy behaviour as he often did, and we, too, ventured into the crowded room that was much larger than it had appeared from outside.

I was glad that the music was loud enough to drown out most of the conversation around us. Hearing French spoken somewhere always conjured up very mixed feelings.

The accent that was common around here sounded jarringly wrong to my ears that were used to the Breton variety, but at the same time made it a little less painful to hear and speak the idiom of what would have been my adopted home country.

Still, I didn't want to hear or speak much of the language tonight. I wanted to have a good time, without being reminded of anything I had no wish to think about.

Jérémie had disappeared instantly and was nowhere to be seen until I glimpsed him much later on the other side of the room with a pretty redhead in his arms. Giovanni, who didn't care much for dancing, slunk off towards the bar right away, while I stood by the door for a moment to watch people dancing and flirting and laughing, feeling hollow and lonely among all those happy-looking couples despite my determination to have fun tonight.

A sassy blonde in a clinging cherry-red polka-dot dress appeared out of nowhere, greeted me with a breathless "Salut, chéri" and brashly grabbed my hands to drag me into the whirling throng.

I let her.

She had nothing at all in common with my lovely Nell except for their mother tongue, but that was just as well.

I washed away the memories of the brown-haired girl who should have shared my life with a lot of cheap red wine and a few large shots of some kind of brandy they made around here and danced with the blond girl all evening long. We spoke little, and when she had turned her back on me in a huff because I had declined her saucy suggestion that she might take me home with her, I realized I hadn't even asked for her name.

I couldn't say I hadn't enjoyed the evening so far, though, having managed to forget for a short while. Red Polka-Dot Dress had been a good dancer, moving nimbly along with me, and the band was really swell, playing a fine mix of quick and slow numbers.

After the girl had abandoned me – for a very tall, very fair-haired sailor who looked Dutch or German – I had leaned languidly on the bar, knocking back some more drinks with Giovanni, who didn't seem to have moved one inch all evening long, until the band stopped playing and a flushed and ruffled Jérémie joined us.

Giovanni's surly face had, as usual, brightened up more and more as he consumed his wine, and he suddenly broke into a high-pitched girlish giggling when he detected red lipstick smudged on the collar of Jérémie's shirt.

I didn't know what was funnier, Jérémie's disheveled state or Giovanni's silly tittering. It was probably the combination of both that sent me into a fit of laughter which made my whole body shake and the muscles in my belly hurt. Tears were streaming down my face, and I wiped them away, laughing even more.

The hiccup I had afterwards had the other two in stitches on our way back. It was quite late, but the night was balmy, with a full yellow moon shining in a starry summer sky that already began to get lighter at the horizon, and we were taking our time, all three of us rather unsteady on our feet.

By the time we came back to where the Arcadia was moored, the day had truly dawned, and we were still rather keyed up and giddy.

"Giovanni, why is it that you never dance?" Jérémie asked curiously as we were getting on board, slurring his words a bit.

"No good at dancing", he growled. "Never learned it properly."

"Then you'll learn it now", I said, grinning.

"Nah, it's too late. What do you say – you can't teach a new step to an old fart?"

"Teach an old dog a new trick", I said. "You're not old, and I'll teach you."

Jérémie sniggered as Giovanni shook his head vehemently.

"Come on, don't be a coward. I'll show you."

"I'm sure as hell not gonna dance with a man", Giovanni protested.

"Sorry we haven't got any girls handy right now. You know they say it's bad luck to have women on board of a ship", I said. "You do know the rhythm of a waltz, don't you – one-two-three, one-two-three. It's fairly easy. Look!"

I demonstrated the steps, took his hands, placed one of them on my shoulder, and, humming one of the tunes the band had played earlier, waltzed the sinewy Italian across the foredeck.

Jérémie seemed about to burst with laughter as he watched us, crumpling to the ground in a quivering heap.

Giovanni, for his part, didn't find anything funny about my attempts to teach him.

On the contrary – he got raving mad. As I was trying to whirl him round once more, he suddenly ducked his head, grabbed me by the arms and did something quick and efficient, a cruel yank or twist – I couldn't say what exactly had happened.

All I knew was that I felt something in my left upper arm or shoulder give with an ugly little crack. Next, I found myself spinning out of control and crash, bad shoulder first, onto the deck. The metal floor slammed into me with a force that left me winded and stunned for a moment or two.

The return of my breath brought a sweeping rush of pain and a swelling rage at the man who had inflicted it on me. I jumped to my feet and went after him despite my useless left arm. I wanted to deck that jerk, injured shoulder or not.

I lunged at him in a blind fury, but he dodged me easily and kept taunting me, making sure he stayed out of my reach, just so. Obviously this fight was not yet over for him either.

I yelled at him, called him all the names that came to mind, hoping I could make him neglect his defence just for the split second I'd need.

He was prancing back and forth, eyes glittering, cursing me in Italian. A particularly nasty wave of pain shot through my shoulder, and I grabbed at it with the other hand, stumbling backwards, on to a large dark rectangle in the pale blue floor of the deck.

"Look out!" Jérémie shouted, sounding genuinely alarmed.

Too late.

There was no ground beneath my feet.

With an inarticulate scream, I fell, at least seven or eight feet, hitting an uneven surface, kind of solid but not really hard. It yielded a bit under my weight as I shifted, trying to figure out where I was, sorting my limbs. I had been lucky insofar as I had landed on my good side and my legs and right arm were perfectly fine when I moved them gingerly.

My eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. I found myself on top of a heap of sacks containing grain or something and realized I must have plummeted through an open load hatch into the cargo hold. I had been quite lucky that the sacks had broken my fall and I had suffered no further damage. The violent pain in my shoulder was awful enough, and the fact that I couldn't move the arm that looked strangely twisted. I knew this was bad.

Carefully cradling my arm to protect it from getting all too jarred if I bumped into something, I made my way towards the hatchway in the semi-darkness and slowly heaved myself up the steep metal steps. Feeling a little wobbly in the knees, I didn't dare climb out on the deck, so I just used my right hand to pull myself up far enough to stick my head over the edge.

Jérémie and Giovanni were hollering at each other in various languages. The Frenchman was accusing the Italian of having killed me, and it looked as if they would be at each other's throats in a matter of seconds.

"Cut the crap, and fucking help me, you pair of morons! I'm not dead!" I called out, dropping back down on one of the bottom steps when the pain flared up like a hundred knives being driven into my upper torso.

Both their heads flew around in relief. The two idiots let go of each other and came hurrying down the hatchway, almost knocking me over once more in their haste.

I couldn't resist knuckling Giovanni on the head with my good hand. "You didn't kill me, you idiot, but you separated my fucking shoulder. What the hell did you do?"

He mumbled something about wrestling and that he wanted to take a closer look at the injury.

I shook my head vehemently and shouted at him to keep his goddamn paws to himself when he stretched out his hand anyway.

An angry voice bellowed at us from the back of the hold, and lights flicked on overhead. "Have you lost your minds to make such a racket at this time of morning? Cut it out this minute! And anyway, what the heck are you doing down here?"

Crawley, the second mate, had appeared from behind a stack of large boxes with a clipboard in his hand and was looking at us in pure bewilderment.

"Erm, sorry, sir", Giovanni hurried to say. "I was trying to teach Carpenter some wrestling tricks."

"Down here?"

"Uh, no, of course not. We were on deck, and something went wrong, and Carpenter …"

"Don't tell me you were so pissed that you fell through the hatch!" Crawley growled at me. "I swear I'd fire all three of you on the spot if we weren't so short of staff already. Now go to bed or make yourselves useful – but go!" Crawley muttered something unintelligible to himself and turned away, about to leave.

"Um, I think Carpenter's injured, sir", Jérémie spoke up. "I think someone should take a look at his arm."

I had meanwhile sunk down on the heap of sacks once more, doubled over, clutching at the shoulder that was giving me flaming hell now. All the wine and liquor in my system certainly didn't help matters either, making me feel even sicker.

Crawley gave an enervated groan and came over, eyes narrowed. "Well", he said grumpily, "that arm does look funny to me. I'd normally say you ought to go see a doctor, but …" He thumped one of the boxes angrily with his fist before he swiveled back to face us. "Dammit, you fools! We ain't got time for that kind of shit. We're supposed to be sailing at nine!"

He pushed his cap high up on his head to scratch his sandy crew cut thoughtfully, then his eyes lit up. Retreating towards the back of the large cluttered space, he bellowed, "Jonah! Jonah! You there?"

Jonah's dark face and broad shoulders showed above the top of a large sea chest. "What's up, Crawl?" he asked.

Crawley pointed at me wordlessly, and Jonah scrutinized me for a moment with a keen eye and nodded, mumbling, "Just a dislocated shoulder. No problem. I'll take care of it."

"What? You?!" I knew he was the go-to guy for the small injuries that happened on board all the time, but I couldn't imagine what he was going to do about this. Didn't want to imagine it, in fact.

"Calm down. I've done this before. Been a medic in the army for a while during the war."

I wasn't entirely convinced and looked around frantically for anyone to intervene, but they all seemed to bow to Jonah's presumable medical knowledge.

"Lie down here", he ordered sternly, pointing at the surface of an oblong crate about six feet long and three feet high. "This is perfect. And take off your shirt."

"What? Why? What are you …" My voice keeled over, sounding slightly panicky now. In fact, I was more than just a little scared.

Oh well, it can't get much worse, I thought resignedly and fumbled to unbutton my shirt. Jonah helped me get it off, and I lay down cautiously, watching warily as he gave further orders to the others.

"You two hold him down." Jonah nodded at Crawley and the Frenchman. "And you, Spaghetti, you go and get some bandages." Giovanni, who appeared a bit green around the gills, scampered off eagerly.

"I don't need to be held down", I declared indignantly. "I promise I won't fall off or anything."

Jonah dismissed my protest with a little lopsided grin that fanned my fears even more. "Believe me, we'll need those two." To my big surprise, he took off his boots and said in this strangely authoritative voice, "At my command – one, two …"

At "three", Crawley flung himself across my legs to pin them down while Jonah swiftly set one heel in my armpit, seized my left hand and forearm and pulled. I drew a sharp breath.

The pain reached a white-hot apex that made me scream and lash out at Jérémie who tried in vain to hold down my other arm, hitting him hard in the chest so he staggered backward, swearing in French.

With a distinctive sickening "clunk", the joint slipped back into the socket, and the pain abated a little. I cursed Jonah rudely nevertheless, particularly when he carefully moved my arm to and fro to check if it was really back where it belonged. He simply laughed it off and looked around for Giovanni.

"Where the hell has Spaghetti gone off to?" he wondered aloud. "Gotta finish up here! Don't move", he told me as an afterthought when he saw me shifting and trying to sit up.

Finally, Giovanni came stumbling in, carrying a battered tin first-aid box.

Jonah quickly found what he needed and set about his work with precise, efficient movements that made clear that he hadn't just been boasting about his medical experience earlier.

Giovanni started chortling again, and Jérémie chimed in, when they saw what he was doing – wrapping a long bandage around my shoulder, arm and chest to immobilize the joint.

Jérémie nudged Giovanni and giggled, "'E's lookin' a bit like the mummy from that movie, isn't 'e?" Both of them doubled over with laughter.

Furious, I struggled to get up. I wanted to slap them both.

"Hey, whatcha think you're doin', Carpenter?" Jonah scolded me. "You stay where you are or I'll tie that other arm to your side, too! You've had enough action to last a few days! And you two dimwits - get the fuck out of here!"

"Yes, piss off, you assholes! I'm not a fucking freak show!" I shouted after them as they scrambled up the hatchway, pushing myself up on my good elbow.

"Whoa, mate. Don't move yet. Calm yourself." Jonah patted my right shoulder, completed his task by placing my forearm in a sling and helped me put my shirt back on, slipping it over my intact arm and draping it loosely around the damaged shoulder.

Of course, I found myself the laughingstock of the crew because of my silly drink-induced accident, the dramatic-looking sling and the bandage that made it impossible to wear my shirt buttoned up properly so that every little breeze sent it fluttering off my shoulder. Everyone had fun ribbing me, especially during the meals when Giovanni or Jonah had to help me handle my food.

After a while, the novelty of it wore off, and they left me alone, mostly lounging on my bunk, utterly bored, occasionally taking a swig from the bottle of rum I kept stashed away among my things, or uselessly pacing the decks, exercising the sailor's right to grouse and getting on people's nerves in the process.

Jonah removed the bandage after a few days, murmuring approvingly to himself as he examined the shoulder. "Looks alright. Can you move it?"

I tried, very cautiously. It was painful but possible.

"Well then", he said, obviously satisfied with what he saw, "looks like it's healing well." He decided the sling would be enough now, which was a bit of a relief but didn't particularly widen my scope of activities.

When he dismissed me, I went out on deck, leaning against the base of a derrick. My eyes fixed on the horizon, I put a somewhat bent cigarette between my lips and dug my new lighter from my pocket.

I was glad I'd bought the thing a couple of weeks ago. At least I didn't have to ask anyone to light up my smoke - striking a match would have been quite a challenge one-handed, as were so many other trivial little things.

I detested having to rely on others to assist me with cutting my meat or tying my shoelaces. To say nothing of the fags. It just wasn't the same if I didn't roll them myself, although Giovanni did his best, feeling he needed to make up for having administered that fatal duck-under.

Gingerly massaging my still-throbbing shoulder, I listened to my own thoughts consciously for the first time in fifteen months.

Being unable to work, condemned to idleness, I had been forced to wind down for the first time since I had left France in a hurry.

Something like this accident had been bound to happen, what with all the drinking and the inebriated skirmishes I kept getting myself into to vent the explosive mix of hurt and anger and confusion that was smoldering within me.

My reputation aboard the Arcadia, as it had been on the numerous ships before her, was that of a fair enough worker, with a decent amount of brains and a good deal of experience, but I was also considered a bit of a troublemaker, easily infuriated and never afraid of picking a fight, especially when there was alcohol involved, which was the case more often than not.

It was basically a miracle that I had survived so far without getting seriously hurt or thrown into jail.


I had sailed out of Brest aboard the Veronica, a Spanish freighter headed for South Africa.

She was the first in a string of ships from all over the world I was going to work on during the next year and more, zigzagging around the world on an uncharted course, never staying on any one vessel for long.

Twice, I got fired.

The first time it was for a violent fight with the asshole of a third mate who had found Nell's photo among my things. One day, I had come into my cabin to catch him leering at the picture he must have found under my pillow. Instead of putting it down and backing off, he kept making lewd, appraising remarks about her looks. I finally lost my temper when he called her "a bit of a country bumpkin", adding with a frivolous grin that "she must be good in bed, then. Country girls often are. All that nature and all those animals to watch, and to learn from."

I had wiped the smirk off his face with a single well-placed punch that smashed his cheekbone and told him afterwards, when he lay on the ground, whimpering in pain, "She's dead, you fucking idiot!" I couldn't keep from stressing my point with a hard kick in the ribs, not bothering to listen to his belated, whined apologies. I had simply left him lying there, bleeding and moaning.

Of course it had been the end of my employment aboard the Celeste, but while I was sorry later about kicking him when he was already down, I have never regretted my impulse to defend Nell's honour. No salacious moron would desecrate my sweet girl's memory and go unpunished.

I kept the picture tucked into my wallet after that and hardly ever brought it out again.

The other time I got kicked out for insubordination. It didn't matter to the rum-swigging geezer who called himself captain of the Étoile that it had been me, plus the boatswain, who had prevented the small freighter from colliding with a fishing boat off the southwest coast of Portugal. We had disobeyed his orders to hold course when we saw the tiny boat wouldn't manage to get out of our way quickly enough. Disobedience had no place in his rigid little world, so we had to go.

I didn't mind leaving either ship. I'd have looked for another job soon anyway.

I had made a habit of moving on once my current ship reached our destination, never giving a reason unless someone asked me to; then I'd cite bad working conditions or pitiful pay or tyrant officers.

The truth was that I wanted to avoid making friends with anyone. I was simply unable to bear too much closeness, and I hardly let on anything about myself, even managing to keep up my guard quite well when I was blind drunk, which happened a lot.

Seeking constant change also served to keep my mind from beginning to wander, as it happens frequently when your work and your surroundings have become a familiar routine that doesn't require your constant full attention. I volunteered for the most demanding and the most difficult jobs just to make sure my mind was occupied and I wouldn't be able to start brooding.

At sea, I spent the evenings with my companions despite my reluctance to form any closer bonds, playing cards, sharing drinks and raucous jokes, doing anything not to be alone with my thoughts until I was tired enough to sleep.

Shore leave was a different matter. I tried to numb the guilt and grief eating away at my soul with exuberant partying in those frenzied nights on the town.

Had I used to be the oddball who could be counted on to excuse himself from the tavern after the second round to enjoy a bit of solitude, I now became famous as the one who'd always be the last to leave in the wee hours of the morning, moving on to the next bar when one of them closed down for as long as possible, having way too many drinks, laughing way too loud, dancing with girls in tarty outfits I normally wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole.

I danced with those nameless, faceless dames to forget the girl I'd never actually danced with - Nell and I had not gone out much, as the locals weren't looking favourably on our relationship and a bunch of boys from the village were keen on trying to rough up that stranger who had dared to take one of their own.

I drank so wouldn't miss my lovely Nellie so badly.

She wouldn't have approved, I knew. She had hated when I got drunk, which didn't happen a lot, but now I found a few glasses of something strong helped ease my misery, temporarily at least.

After a while, I got quite used to the heavy drinking and didn't even have those dreadful hangovers any more, those mornings when I awoke with a splitting head and the surreal feeling of not knowing where I was. Not even knowing who I was.

In a way, I had what I had once wanted: complete freedom. No attachment to anyone, no expectations to fulfill, nobody and nothing to consider when I made a decision, no commitments to make.

Nothing but a bunch of memories of those I had loved, and lost.

Memories that hurt – not just the bad ones; it was remembering the happy times that tore me to pieces more than anything, so I tried, more or less successfully, not to touch upon any of them.

I had come to find in those erratic months of sailing around the world that being on my own, all alone, free of all the ties that bind, was not what I wanted after all.

Yet I felt it was all I could be now. I didn't have the strength to love and lose again. I figured I would get used to my solitary life eventually, if I learned to let go of what had been instead of forcefully drowning it out with too much drink and too much false gaiety.

Trying so hard to run away from the ghosts of all that had been taken from me, I had managed to lose the last thing I'd still had.

Myself.

I had turned into a person I sometimes had a hard time recognizing.

In fact, I despised the booze-guzzling, foul-mouthed, irritable sad sack I had become, the thin, hardened face and jaded eyes looking back at me from the mirror when I shaved.

Now, temporarily deprived of the ability to fill my empty days with hard work, thrown back to myself, I felt a strange relief at no longer struggling to keep up frantic activity in order to busy my hands and my mind so I wouldn't sense, or think about, the big black hole that was my grieving, desolate soul.

Slowly drawing on my cigarette, I finally admitted to myself that I was indeed tired of it all, especially the woozy half-hungover lightheadedness of the mornings after having got sloshed once more, the bruises and twisted limbs and fat lips sustained in the umpteenth pub fight.

I was sick to death of permanently fleeing silence and introspection, of all the pretend raucousness, of the show I made of flirting and dancing, of jostling and brawling.

It hadn't helped get over Nell, not really. It had only delayed the grief for a while.

I vowed to stop drinking, or at least to go easy on the hard stuff, before I accidentally killed myself or ended up with a knife between my ribs.

A soft drizzle had begun to fall and was now starting to make my clothes feel clammy.

Flicking my cigarette butt over the rail, I turned and went inside, where I bumped sideways into Crawley.

"Jeez, can't you … oh, it's you, Carpenter!. How's that shoulder doing? Hope I didn't hurt you, and sorry if I did."

"It's alright, that was my good arm", I reassured him, although the collision had rattled the other shoulder rather harshly.

"Fine. Good to see you here, by the way. I wanted to have a word with you. Jonah told me you were out of that bandage now", Crawley said, "and I thought we could put you on kitchen duty while you're recuperating. Joachim can take over for you on deck meanwhile."

I was sure he could. Joachim was a bear of a man, broad and strong as an ox, a German ex-boxer who looked ridiculously huge when he was at work in the small galley next to Andy, the scrawny cook. I wasn't quite as sure about my own part in Crawley's suggestion. I wouldn't mind going back to work as best I could, but I voiced some concerns about how much use I could be with my damaged arm.

"At least give it a try, will you?" Crawley said brusquely. "You can be quite a pain in the ass when you've got nothing to do."

"I know", I said with a rueful grin that made Crawley laugh.

I tried to make the best of my new job. I hated most of it – the steamy, smelly, unbearably hot, cramped little space was particularly awful in the sweltering tropical heat we were cruising through on our long way to Australia – but I didn't complain and even learned a few things that I guessed might come in handy one day. Andy was quite impressed how much I actually managed to accomplish while encumbered by the sling and the injury and kept admonishing me not to overexert myself.

However, my stint as a sous-chef was cut short by another stupid accident. A huge bowl of potatoes I had spent almost a whole miserable hour peeling was threatening to slide off the countertop when a violent wave rocked the ship. I flung out my hand to steady it and managed to push it to the back of the counter, next to the stove. Andy had a large pot of soup simmering there, and the rolling of the ship made the boiling liquid splash out, right across my hand.

At first, I tried to play it down, dreading another period of forced idleness, but it hurt like hell, and of course Andy immediately detected the blistering, reddened back of my right hand and sent me off to have Jonah take care of me.

I bore the teasing and the sneers with dignity, to everyone's surprise. They had reckoned with me ranting and raving and threatening to smash people's faces, but I didn't see any point in behaving like that any longer.

I even laughed with the rest of them when Jonah suggested he'd be happy to feed me now that both of my arms or hands were somewhat out of order. "Oh yes, you'd all love that, wouldn't you? No way!" I declared, insisting that I was well able to hold a fork with my maltreated hand.

On the third day after the soup incident, Crawley poked his head into the crew's sleeping quarters where I was perched on my bunk, trying to kill time. I was so desperately bored by now that I had borrowed Jack O'Reilly's battered pocket bible, for want of anything else to read.

Crawley guffawed when he saw the thick black volume in my hand. "Sorry to disturb your bid for sainthood, Carpenter, but I could use your help."

My ears pricked up hopefully at the prospect of something to do, and I dropped the book carelessly on the folded blanket I was sitting on.

"Have you got a neat handwriting?"

"Um … yes, I guess I do, if I try hard", I said. "Not sure how neat it will be right now, though." I glanced meaningfully at my hand that was still wrapped in Jonah's gauze bandage.

"Well, it needn't be pretty, only legible. If you can hold a pen properly, that'll be good enough. We've got a horrible backlog of paperwork. I haven't got the time, and Ranston was supposed to help me but now he's out with the flu, so I thought maybe you …"

I didn't think twice. The work itself was boring stuff, mostly sorting and filing papers, and copying scribbled notes into the official logbook, but it gave my days some purpose, and it reminded me pleasantly of how I used to do Grandpa's bookkeeping.

What was more, working behind the closed door of Crawley's office granted me some time and space to be alone and to make up my mind how I wanted to go on with my life.

I was beginning to feel an increasing need for peace and quiet, although I wasn't sure where to find it or even where to search.

Maybe I'd simply collect my back pay when we arrived in Sydney and rent a room there for a fortnight or a month or whatever it took until my shoulder had properly mended. Buy some time to re-establish who I was and what I wanted.