Titanic

Chapter one

"It's been 84 years..."

"Just tell us what you can-"

Camila held up her hand, silencing the room. "It's been 84 years... And I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in."

She closed her eyes as she remembered seeing The Titanic for the first time.

"Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams. And it was. It really was..."

Camila looked up at the ship, taking it in with cool appraisal. "I don't see what all the fuss is about. It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauretania."

"You can be blase about some things, Camila, but not about Titanic. It's over a hundred feet longer than Mauretania, and far more luxurious. It has squash courts, a Parisian cafe... even Turkish baths." Shawn turned towards Sinu as she is helped out of the car. "Your daughter is much too hard to impress, Sinu."

Sinu ignored him as she gazed up at the ship. "So this is the ship they say is unsinkable."

"It is unsinkable. God himself couldn't sink this ship." Shawn spoke with pride.

Camila tried not to roll her eyes as her two maids stumbled out of the car.

A man dressed in white star line uniform scurried towards them, "Sir, you'll have to check your baggage through the main terminal, round that way-"

Shawn nonchalantly handed the man a fiver. "I put my faith in you, good sir."

"Yes, sir. My pleasure, sir."

"These trunks here, and 12 more in the Daimler. We'll have all this lot up in the rooms."

The white star man looks stricken when he sees the enormous pile of steamer trunks and suitcases loading down the second car, including wooden crates and the steel safe. He whistles frantically for some cargo-handlers nearby who come running.

Shawn breezes on, leaving the minions to scramble. He quickly checks his pocket watch. "We'd better hurry. This way, ladies." He indicates the way toward the first class gangway.

They pass a line of steerage passengers in their coarse wool and tweeds, queued up inside movable barriers like cattle in a chute.

Shawn gets jostled by two yelling steerage boys who shove past him. And he is bumped again a second later by the boys' father. "Watch it!!"

"Sorry." The Cockney father pushes on, after his kids, shouting.

"Steerage swine. Apparently missed his annual bath."

"Honestly, Shawn, if you weren't forever booking everything at the last instant, we could have gone through the terminal instead of running along the dock like some squalid immigrant family." Sinu spoke up, shaking her head in disbelief.

"All part of my charm, Sinu. At any rate, it was my darling fiancee's beauty rituals which made us late."

Camila looked up. "You told me to change."

"I couldn't let you wear black on sailing day, sweetpea. It's bad luck."

"I felt like black." Camila mumbled under her breath.

Shawn guided them towards the ship. "Here I've pulled every string I could to book us on the grandest ship in history, in her most luxurious suites... and you act as if you're going to your execution."

Camila looked up once again, staring at the great iron wall that was The Titanic. Shawn motioned her forward, and she walked through the gangway to the D Deck doors with a sense of overwhelming dread.