Worried sick, she had no idea what was happening to Tom, his letters had ceased after she had left Adelaide. All thoughts of getting home quickly had perished in a welter of confusion and other personal matters – to wit the health and well-being of her aunt. A lot of passenger sailings into the European war zone had been cancelled. Already U-boats had been active, sinking the aircraft carrier Courageous and the battleship Royal Oak. To say nothing of the SS Artheria which was attacked, with the loss of 112 lives and a Dutch Liner, the Simon Bolivar, victim, in November, to a magnetic mine. She had thought of throwing in her lot with groups talking of going via Africa and across to France, but it always came back to Aunt Blanche. It had come as a bit of a shock to Fay, and would no doubt be an even greater one to her father and mother to find that Blanche was now what might be called a frail, ill, distressed gentlewoman.
