Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Violet

Wildflowers

If she were to tell the story of her life, she would start among the flowers. That is where her memory began– picking wildflowers as she walked through the pale grasslands of the Argentine Pampas.

She suspects this is not the tale most people want to hear. Most would clamour to know about that one night, as they strain to imagine the low, grinding sound of ice against metal. She has come to realise that people want to sail close to the horror, skim the surface, feel the splash of icy water on their faces and then race on, unharmed.

Those who were there understand it cannot be like this. They know that the horror will reach up and pull you under. Her mother would tell those trying to sail closer and closer, to stay well away from the deep water.

She learnt early on in her life to heed her mother's advice, and so she does not look into the cold, black depths if she can help it. She prefers to remember lives lived and oceans sailed.

The story she would wish to tell is about the small thread that was her life, and though her thread may have been thin– hold it to the light and you can barely make out its colour– when it was woven with other threads it made a cloth that stretched through time.

Somewhere within the weave would be her story of the Titanic , but she likes to think the cloth she was part of could be flung out full over a table or laid wide and taught across a room. It would not be a piece of fabric snagged on one single night.

She knows the pattern would be intricate, woven with flowers. Honeysuckle would be there– her mother would insist on that– and roses, lily of the valley and, of course, violets. She would like to stand back and admire how the sun catches the colours and textures within the cloth and say:

‘I was part of that.'