* * *
Shay turneda slow circle in the huge dockyard. “Ships?”
“That’s right.” Ollie panned the gimbal in a wide shot, then settled on Shay. “What do you know about the year 1912?”
“Um… the Titanic sank?”
“Correct, and ten points for being topical. What about 1943?”
“Fuck all.”
“Language.”
“Shit, I mean, not much.”
Ollie laughed. “Don’t worry, I can edit that out.” He killed the shot and hefted the gimbal onto his shoulder. “Come with me.”
He led Shay into the heritage centre. A special room had been reserved for them in the basement. Safely inside, and surrounded by all the builder’s tea and Gregg’s doughnuts they could possibly want, Ollie directed Shay to an armchair by the loaded bookshelves. He set the camera on the tripod, lined up the shot, and turned it on.
Then he perused the shelves until he found what he was looking for.
The thick book was covered in dust. It misted the air as Ollie dropped it on the small table, and Shay waved his hand to dispel it. “So this is about ships?”
“Shipbuilding, to be precise,” Ollie corrected. “They’ve been building ships around here since 1346.”
“The Titanic wasn’t built here, was it?”
“Nothing about today has anything to do with the Titanic.”
Shay pulled a face. “Shame. I was hoping I could pretend I was clever because I’ve seen the film.”
God, he was cute. Ollie cleared his throat. “Anyway, so I only found out about who I’m going to show you today by accident. I was looking to see if you had any relatives who’d fought in the Second World War, and this person came up.”
“They weren’t a soldier then?”
“Nope.”
“So he was a ship builder?”
“Joyce King, née Kasperson, to be exact.” Ollie opened the book and tapped on a page. “She, my friend, was your great-great-grandmother.”
Shay stared at the book, eyes wide, and Ollie stared at him. Research-wise, he’d struck gold when he’d dug into Shay’s rich family history, but in real life, there was nothing more colourful than the wonder in his eyes as Ollie revealed it to him, piece by piece.
“Which side is she from?”
“Your mother’s.”
“Of course…. Kaspersen. That’s the Danish side, right?”
“Yes. Rudolph was her grandfather, though her mother was English. Her husband too, so the Danish part is slowly fading at this point.”
Shay nodded and went back to studying the photograph. It was better quality than any images Ollie had shown him so far, and he wondered if Shay was starting to see himself in body as well as spirit. “It’s so strange,” Shay said. “I feel like I’m on the ceiling, looking down on this happening to someone else.”
Ollie had felt the same many times over the last few years. His hands twitched to reach for Shay, but the amount of overfamiliarity he already had to cut from existing footage kept him still. “I can’t imagine how this feels for you, especially when you had no idea any of these people existed. It’s different when you’re half-aware that you had relatives who lived extraordinary lives. You expect the twists and turns, even if you don’t know where they’ll be.”
Shay traced the text below the photograph of Joyce King with his finger. “Tell me about her?”
Ollie nodded. He had little to offer Shay in every other facet of their relationship, but he could do this. “Well, it all starts and ends in Sunderland. In 1938, it was the biggest shipbuilding town in the world. That year, 169,000 tons were produced here.”
