McQueen's Agency Read Free

shared a flat together. They had made loads of new friends, spent long hours on the beach and generally revelled in the warmth of this new country.
    She had met Tom on the boat. He was another emigrant leaving Dundee, hoping for a new and better life. He was a bit older than Molly and Nell and his parents had died.
    They had spent lots of time together on the journey. Then in Sydney, where he quickly found a job as an electrician with a large company, their friendship had blossomed into something more serious.
    Then it had all gone wrong.
    Nell had answered an advert for an office worker on a remote sheep farm in Queensland, met Terry and got married.
    Molly had travelled up to the farm for the wedding. She smiled when she recalled the wedding clothes. Nell was dressed in faded jeans and a white halter-neck top, while she had worn a thin seersucker dress with pastel-coloured stripes, both of them wearing flat strappy sandals. She remembered how hot the sun had been and how vast the fields were. Under the wide, blue sky they seemed to stretch to the very ends of the earth.
    How happy she had been that day. She vowed then that she would spend her entire life in that country and that had been her intention until arriving back in the city. A letter was waiting for her; a simple white envelope that held no warning of its contents.
    Tom was dead.
    He had been a passenger in a van involved in a road traffic accident. The driver, a work colleague, had escaped unharmed. Tom had often told her what a reckless driver his colleague was. Always driving too fast and taking unnecessary chances. He had been told off by the boss of the firm but he never heeded any warnings and now this accident had happened and Tom had paid the price with his life while the driver had escaped unharmed and had even been acquitted of the charge. She couldn’t stop thinking if only Tom had been with someone else in another vehicle or if the boss of the firm had been more strict with this reckless driver then Tom would still be alive. Her days were filled with angry thoughts of ‘If only’.
    She felt ashamed now but at the time she had wished it had been the driver who died, a thought that sent her almost crazy, raging at the four walls in the flat and crying non-stop. Nell had come to see her but the joy and pleasure had all disappeared to be replaced by a deep sadness and rage.
    She had carried on working for a few more months, going out and coming in but never ever leaving the flat except for work. Then she booked her passage home, bringing with her the money she had saved; the money she now hoped would finance the agency.
    The trip home had been a terrible time for her. It was a complete contrast to the journey out. She stayed in the cabin for most of the day, only venturing out at night for an evening meal. Then she would walk the decks for hours until tiredness drove her to bed.
    To start with some of the cabin crew had asked her if everything was all right but after the first week they stopped, apart from one kind steward who brought her meals to the cabin and checked on her periodically. No doubt they thought she was some kind of crazy woman.
    She quickly gathered all the photographs and stuffed them back in the handbag. It was a pity that memories couldn’t be stuffed away like that, pushed into some dark handbag and put away in the wardrobe.
    It was going to be a busy day tomorrow. She would drive the family Anglia to Wormit station where her parents would catch a train on the first step of their journey to Southampton, and the ship The Golden Empress . Then over to the agency where hopefully there would be clients all eager for her services.
    In spite of her sad memories, she slept quite well and Coronation day dawned grey, misty and drizzly.
    Her mother was ready to leave. She gazed out the window at the weather.
    ‘What a shame the sun’s not shining for the Queen.’ She turned to Molly. ‘Now you will be all right on your own, Molly?’ Her