This book is based on a true story, but some of the real things had been lost by the time we were doing the pictures. So other people made substitutes: Alex White drew the ocean liner card; other children, whose parents wanted their names kept private, made fortune catchers and played cat’s cradle and let the pictures be printed — and the author and publisher thank them. Marza’s daughter gave us permission to use the pictures from later Sibton Park school catalogs: thank you, Barbara Service. Thanks also to Kevin R. Tam for the photographs of the
France
and the
Liberte;
BBC Wales
Capture Wales
and Daniel Meadows, photographer, for the Wellingtons; Jim Gaston for the pens; and Charles Owen & Company, headwear manufacturer, for the English riding hat. All used with permission. Special thanks to Miranda Hickox, who edited an early version of this story when she was nine and read it again and again after that.

When the author says something is real, it is. The dolls and their tea set, all the letters and stories and school compositions, the Sibton Park clothes list, and the quote from the catalog are real. So are the photographs she took of her friends at Sibton Park and the horse in the field. She took the picture of the window in London later, but it’s the same window. The author’s father, Arthur Koponen, took the pictures of her reading, all the family photographs, and the paddock steps with Sibton Park in the background.

Some people may be curious about the illustrations from old books: they are real too. The artists were Arthur Rackham (
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
), Kay Nielsen (“East of the Sun and West of the Moon”), Edmund Evans from a design by “Phiz” (“Hansel and Gretel”) and H. P. Thorpe (
Pride and Prejudice
).

The author thanks Megan Tingley for her perceptive comments and strong support, Christine Cuccio for good judgement and a major save, Billy Kelly for the beautiful fonts and layout, Renee Gelman, for making it such a beautiful book, and Alvina Ling, who believed in the book from the beginning and read it all over and over, without ever losing her enthusiasm or her temper. Thank you, Alvina.

To my mother, Sally Rumble Koponen, who always encouraged me to write and saved all my stories — even when we moved.

Chapter One:

News

I’ll start the story one fall afternoon, when I had been sent home from my friend Henry’s house.

“I suppose you were the ringleader, Libby?” his mother had said. She usually said that when we got caught doing something; I thought of it as a compliment. It wasn’t meant to be one, I know, but the word made me think of the circus.

Henry stuck up for me: He said he’d wanted to see how much noise we could make, too, and so had everyone else. I’m glad he said that. His mother probably would have sent everyone home anyway, not just me, but it was still a good thing to say.

The air was colder on the way home, and the sky was orange at the edges and pale in the middle. But there was still time to play outside before dinner, maybe enough time for other people to come over.

I ran the rest of the way. When I opened our door, my father was there, talking to my sister Emmy. He looked excited.

“I’m home early because it’s a special occasion,” he said, but he wouldn’t say why, even when Emmy asked in a cute way.

“Daddy!” I said. (I never try to act cute.) “You shouldn’t have said anything if you weren’t going to tell us. It’s not fair.” But that just made him laugh more. “At least give us a hint.”

“It’s something that will be a big change for all of us — especially you and Emmy. No more questions. We’re eating soon, and I’ll tell you at the table.”

When dinner was ready, Emmy turned out the lights and I lit the candles (Emmy and I take turns doing that), while our little brother and sister got in their places.

It WAS a special dinner: lasagna! We ate while our parents talked: we’re not allowed to talk unless one of them asks us a question. This is a rule most families don’t have, I know. We have it because my father says “adult conversation is very important.” He says most people stop talking to each other when they’re married, and he doesn’t want that to happen to him and my mother.

So they, mostly my father, talk, and sometimes I listen and sometimes I don’t; that night, I listened even to some of the really boring things, but I still didn’t find out what the news was.

Emmy and Willy, who sit next to each other, were doing something on their laps — passing something back and forth, I think. I couldn’t see what. Willy was giggling, though. Bubby played with her food. I wrote on the table. This is kind of a strange habit, I guess, but I like to do it. I hold my pointer finger between my thumb and my middle finger, as though my finger is a pencil, and then I write with it.

My father saw me doing it.

“It’s too bad no one will ever read all the great novels Libby’s written on the dining room table,” he said. (He knows I want to be a writer when I grow up — everyone who knows me knows that!) Then he and my mother laughed.

I didn’t. Emmy didn’t laugh, either. We didn’t make a face at each other — those kinds of faces count as talking — but we both hate it when he’s sarcastic. Grown-ups are never funny when they say sarcastic things, and I wish they wouldn’t do it, especially to children. Of course, I didn’t say that. I wrote it on the table, though.

Finally, he said he would tell us the news.

“We’re moving to England for six months. I’ve been transferred to the London office of J. Walter Thompson. They wanted me to go alone, and come back for a visit after three months, but I said, ‘No, I want to bring my family with me.’ So we’re all going.”

He said that he would go first, and my mother would bring us over on an ocean liner, and he’d find a place for us to live in London and a school for Emmy and me — and maybe Willy, too.

“English schools are different,” he said. “It will be an interesting experience for you.”

The Liberté’s maiden voyage into New York. (You can see the New York skyline in the background.)

I was still trying to imagine an ocean liner.

“Will we be on the ship for a long time? Will it have a gangplank and portholes?” I said.

“Five nights. You’ll sleep in cabins with portholes and bunk beds,” he said (Emmy and I have always wanted bunk beds). “You and Emmy will be in one cabin, Mommy and Willy and Bubby in the one next door. It’s a famous ocean liner called the
Liberté
.”

“Like Libby!” I said.

“
Liberté
is French for ‘liberty.’ You’ll have a wonderful time on the ship — there are all kinds of things for children to do.”

He said that in a few years “that form of travel” wouldn’t exist, and how he wanted us to “have the experience.” He couldn’t take the boat with us because there wasn’t time, but on the way home, we’d all go on one together.

He talked about ocean liners for a long time: I pictured wind and ladies in long dresses going up the gangplank and the sound of a foghorn. Being on one did seem pretty exciting.

That night, when Emmy and I were having our bath, I tried to figure out how something that big, and made of metal, could float.

“I just don’t understand why it doesn’t sink,” I said. I had brought a little iron horse of mine into the tub with us.

“Look — even this little horse goes straight to the bottom every time. And Daddy said the boat is bigger than Great Oak Lane.”

I thought about it more in bed, while I was listening to the cars go by. I like falling asleep to those sounds: first the engine from far away getting closer and louder — it sounds lonely and adventurous from far away, then loud and exciting when the lights sweep the room. But no matter how much I thought about it, I still couldn’t understand how a huge boat made out of metal could float.

And then I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in another
country
. I put my feet up on the wall at the head of the bed, and my hands behind my head, and thought. I couldn’t picture it at all (except for London Bridge, which I imagined as arching over a river, with little towerlike houses on it). But even though I didn’t know exactly what it would be like, it felt exciting — a real adventure, not a made-up one, that I’d be in myself.

Chapter Two:

Telling Henry

The first thing I thought of when I woke up was telling my friends: especially The Gang and Henry. The Gang is Peg and Pat (twins), Kenny, Emmy, and I. We’ve known each other almost all our lives, and we always walk to school together. We meet at Peg and Pat’s.

That day was like fall and summer at the same time. The light was pale, there were dead leaves on the sidewalk, but my new school clothes felt itchy and hot by the time we got to Peg and Pat’s (we ran).

As usual, Kenny was there first, waiting, and Peg and Pat weren’t ready: Mrs. Tampone was still brushing Pat’s hair. Pat’s hair is long and shiny and black. It never looks messy — no matter what we do, it stays shining and in place. Even her part always stays straight! Pat’s face always looks clean, too, even when we’ve been playing outside all day — not like ours. (I once heard my mother say, sighing, to another mother, “My children all have that pinky-white skin that looks dirty so quickly.”)

Pat wriggled and made faces — her mother shook her head and smiled at me, probably because I was the only one watching.

“Do you do that when your mother brushes your hair?” she said. My mother never brushes my hair. I do it myself; she’s busy with Willy and Bubby in the morning. But I didn’t answer — it was none of Mrs. Tampone’s business, anyway.

While Peg was brushing their dog’s hair, Kenny kept trying to grab the brush, and Peg told Emmy to tickle him, and she did. Duke jumped up at Kenny, barking hysterically.

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