When the war finally ended Posey wasn't ready to leave England just yet. Even with Mrs. Daniels' blessing for her and John to go and live with her in Boston, there was something tethering her to London.
Part of it was that she wasn't willing to let go of the dream of it just yet; she'd spent her whole war trying to get back to England, and though there wasn't much of a place for her there anymore she still didn't want to let go. An even bigger part of it was that she was scared. She found herself standing on the doorstep of a new phase of her life, ready to ring the doorbell and walk into the unknown, and she wasn't sure she was ready to do that again. Change had wrought such sorrow on her life that even in a warless world she was afraid.
Posey was a person who lost things, and, though in a lot of ways she already had, she wasn't willing to lose home just yet.
VE Day passed and then came VJ Day - Posey hadn't even considered that the men of Easy might have been sent over to the Pacific to fight in that war, but her worries about them came just delayed enough that she didn't have to fret for long. Then came her twenty-first birthday and then came Christmas. It was the loneliest Christmas Posey had ever had. She had John, yes, and John had her, and the pair of them had another dingy hotel room they were using government benefits to pay for, and it was hollow. They exchanged gifts and faked smiles and John went for a walk in a nearby park whilst Posey sat and looked out of the window.
She had overstayed her welcome in England. Now, finally, she knew it was time to go.
By the time the new year rolled around they had booked tickets for a ship that would take them to New York, and from there they would take a train to Boston.
When the second of January arrived Posey was desperate to get out. It was a difficult day for her - a whole year since she'd left Easy - and she'd never wanted to be in America more.
But even so she didn't know that she'd ever see any of the men from Easy again, didn't know that she had the nerve. She was a different person now to who she'd been when they'd known her and probably they were too.
She didn't know that she'd ever see Bill again, either, as much as she'd loved him. And who was to say they'd still be in love if they ever met again, anyway? Maybe once upon a time they were meant to be but maybe soulmates were a different entity in wartime, easier to come by and easier to lose, once held close and then gone forever. The threads of people's lives were so intimately interwoven during war that perhaps it was simply easier to connect with someone like that, to feel that they shared half of your heart because you were going through the same things. But lives diverged and so did hearts and maybe they simply weren't meant to be anymore.
Bill had been the person she'd needed during some of the most difficult hours of her life, had been meant for her back then. But maybe he wasn't made for her. Maybe their time had passed.
When she boarded the boat to America, Posey felt empty. Already she missed the safety and comfort of the hotel room. She didn't like to be surrounded by so many people, being jostled on all sides by elbows and luggage as other passengers made their way on board.
But, she tried to remind herself, when the trip was over she'd be back in her bedroom at Mrs. Daniels' house which had been kept exactly as she'd left it, apparently. And there would be comfort there, and privacy and safety and nostalgia. Memories. Posey didn't know that she was ready to face those memories just yet but at least she had a lot of travelling to do until then.
She stood out on the deck with John and waited while the crowds died down, watching the sun rise and feeling the breeze ruffling her hair. It was long again now and reached just below her shoulders. She spent a lot of time styling her hair these days, determined not to take it for granted again, and she had the front strands rolled back and secured with the pale blue piece of ribbon John had used to wrap her Christmas present; the present had been perfume, a start to building up her belongings. She was only just now beginning to feel like a girl again, even though she'd been wearing dresses and growing out her hair for over a year, but she'd been a boy for longer than that and the habit was hard to break.
"You okay?" John asked, glancing at her once before returning to watching the last few stragglers board the ship.
Posey nodded, trying to smile. "Yeah. I'm ready to go now, I think."
"Me too," John said. She was glad he felt that way; she knew very well how it felt to be dragged to America against your will and also knew how it was likely to end - that was, in utter disaster. This time she'd be going willingly and she was glad that John was with her, that he wanted to be with her. They had to stick together now.
But still there was the fear. What would she say to Mrs. Daniels? How would she go about making a new life? What if she got there and it was different to how she imagined? What if, after everything, she still wasn't happy?
Posey felt sick with uncertainty. There was no life for her in England anymore but what if there wasn't one in America either?
"Lets go find our cabin," John said, and laid a hand on Posey's shoulder to encourage her away from the railing and towards the ship's interior.
Posey nodded, trying to work on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. Once she was inside she'd feel better. Being inside was safe and quiet and comfortable. Being outside was scary.
The cabin they had inside the ship was small but cosy, plain but comfortable. The sun shone brightly through the one, tiny window, determined to push its way in, and blanketed the floor in warmth. Posey took her shoes off and stood in the pool of light, closing her eyes and letting it warm her.
John told her he was going out to scout out the ship and would come back with food, and Posey nodded, already in the process of dragging the desk chair over to the window. She wanted to watch the water ripple and glimmer in the sunlight but the view wasn't as pretty as she'd hoped.
It took a while for the ship to leave but it didn't take long at all for Posey to get bored. With the ship stationary in the water there wasn't much to look at outside the window, and the blue of the water this close to the port was murky and dark. She turned on her chair to face the rest of the room and took it in, her eyes sweeping over the place she'd be calling home for the next fortnight and the belongings neither her nor John had packed away yet - her shoes left out in the middle of the floor, both of their small suitcases thrown haphazardly onto the beds they'd claimed.
Sighing, Posey got to her feet. She didn't like to unpack her things with each new place she went to, for she always ended up leaving in the end, but she knew she'd have to get it over with at some point. She made quick work of unloading the clothes she'd acquired since being with John and placing them in the wardrobe, and then stacked her books on the desk. Her shoes she placed on the rack by the door and her makeup and vanity equipment she left in the bag. When she was finished she pushed the suitcase under her bed and sat down on the edge, the silence in the cabin hanging restlessly on the air, a spark about to catch light.
Posey gazed at her hands as they fiddled with her skirt before tucking them beneath her thighs, then looked up and met her own eyes in a mirror she hadn't noticed before.
The person staring back at her wasn't someone she knew well. She looked older than her twenty-one years, matured by all she'd seen of the world prematurely. She should have been too young to know loss as intimately as she did. She should have been oblivious to the horrors of war, both military and civilian. But she wasn't. She knew pain and suffering and loneliness and fear better than she could remember safety and happiness and love and warmth. Posey had met the dark parts of life and shaken hands with them, but try as she might to free herself they wouldn't let her go. She knew them too well by now to feel anything unmarred by their presence, for how could she ever feel true happiness after having felt true pain? How could she ever feel safe when she knew just how easily it could be taken away?
The blonde of her hair was as dull as she remembered John's being when she'd first seen him in hospital. Back then she'd wondered whether her own had looked the same, completely naïve as she was, but it hadn't. Her locks had been golden and bright, but now the colour had been stripped out of them. The only colour she could find in her face was the hazel of her eyes and the painted-on red of her lips.
Posey bent to pull her suitcase back out from under the bed and rouged her cheeks, applying the product liberally to make herself look more alive. When she looked at herself again she looked even more hollow than before. Was it better to be void of colour or vibrant with what was fake?
Sighing, Posey sat back on the bed and rubbed at her cheeks harshly to remove some of the blush. She was feeling sorry for herself, a habit she just couldn't seem to shake. So many people had suffered so much worse than her during the war and yet she filled her days by revelling in her own self-pity. She was sickened by it. What claim did she have to the land of the free if she was still living chained to her past, bound to things she wished hadn't happened but had?
Life had to go on, and it would go on until it didn't anymore. She would have to make the most of it. When she sat down at the chair by the window again, the ship's horn wailed and they began to move away from port.
She was off to start a new life but it didn't feel new at all. It felt stale already, disappointing, empty. Already she wanted to return to the hotel room in London they'd been living in for the past few months.
When John returned Posey plastered on a smile and accepted the food he'd managed to scavenge for breakfast. He told her all about the size of the ship, the grandeur of the upper decks, and the huge number of people who were on it. Posey nodded along, smiling at all the right moments and agreeing with him where she felt she needed to. He, at least, seemed excited to be leaving.
A while later Posey returned to gazing out of the window, watching the waves on the sea as they carried her away from one home and towards another. How was it possible to feel so insignificant and so important at the same time? How could everything feel so little and so big at once?
Resting her elbows on the windowsill and her chin in her hands, Posey allowed herself a tiny, fragile smile. Life would go on because it had to, and it would go on until it didn't anymore. Until then it would guide her wherever it wanted to and she'd go along willingly, innocent to whatever might lie in her path, as impassive as a swan gliding gracefully over the water with its feet kicking frantically below.