Chapter 24: The Wait

The ships left on a Tuesday, in clear weather, with the whole of North Island standing at the rope.

I stood at the front this time.

Jo stood on my left in sunglasses and a navy-blue scarf.

She had bought it for the occasion, so no family readiness officer could outdo her.

On my right stood the Captain's wife, in her pearl pin, holding a thermos of coffee for us all.

"You do know you don't have to be here," she said.

"I know."

"You could be at home."

"I could be."

"Then why?"

"Because I wanted to see him off," I said. "Not to wait for him. To see him off."

She smiled into her cup.

Across the concrete the detachment was falling in, row after row of flight suits and seabags.

Nolan stood at the end of the third line.

He saw me at once.

He did not wave.

He only looked at me, steady and bare, the way he had across the long table of silver.

When the ranks broke, he came straight across the pavement with his seabag on one shoulder.

The families went quiet around us, a little, the way people do when something private happens in public.

He stopped an arm's length from me.

"You came," he said.

"I said I would."

"You didn't have to."

"I know. That's why I did."

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