16,976.0 km to belfast
135.0 km.
I left in September 1972. I was twenty-three and a nurse at the Royal Victoria, and 1972 was the worst year there ever was over there. I'm not going to write about it. Anyone who was there doesn't need telling and anyone who wasn't can look it up.
Australia would take you for ten pounds. I put my name down in the spring and didn't tell anyone until the letter came.
Da had died in '68. Mam's chest was already bad. Bridie was nineteen and had been picked for some swimming squad, and she was going to go to England in the autumn to train as a PE teacher. She didn't go. Somebody had to stay with Mam, and I had a letter with a date on it.
At the bus for the airport she gave me her swimming cap. White rubber, with rubber flowers all over it. "You'll need this out there," she said. I couldn't swim a stroke and she knew it.
It's in the drawer beside my bed. The rubber's gone sticky and two of the flowers have come off. I didn't learn to swim until 1994. I was forty-five.