Journeys always sound like a really good idea at their beginning. By the time you have reached their middle you have had plenty of opportunity to reflect on and curse the moment of choice in which you launched out.

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I don't understand why we have to move! The very thought leaves me sick. What will I tell my friends? Will they still be my friends after we've moved? It's just not the same trying to talk to them online. Where am I going to go to school? Is it a good school? Are they friendly there? Why do things have to change??!!!!

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If you are reading this, then thankyou. It gives me comfort at this, our moment of greatest peril, that someone will have heard our story and remembered who we are.

My siblings and I are all that remains of our family. Father was a ship's doctor who dissapeared somewhere in the notorious pirate-infested waters of the Carribbean, Mother took to her bed and died of consumption not long after we received the news. That leaves Thomas, my twin, Matthew and Denise with me, Anne, to look after them all. Nothing extraordinary had ever happened to us in our lives, ever.

Father sailed off once or twice a year and returned with tales of distant lands and strange tides that he had visited. There were also his tales of the fantastic creatures that he had seen in his travels: speeding sharks, great grey whales, mystifying mermaids and terrifying sea monsters that could have swallowed ships whole. It was no wonder that deep down, in each of our hearts, all of us children wanted to set out and see those sights for ourselves.

Mother loved father to distraction. You could see it in the way that she looked into his eyes each time he left for sea, as if she had already missed him and welcomed him back home all at the same time. You could see it in the way that she would step out onto the main road each day at the expected time for the post to arrive to see if any letters had come home. People said that she was only a weak woman and that was why she died of consumption. People just hadn't seen the way that she worked through each day with the strength of a man half her age to make sure all of us had what we needed.

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Moving truck arrived. So NOT INTERESTED in helping to pack. I know it makes no difference, but once we leave here mum says it won't be our home anymore and we can't come back. Why!!??

I grew up here. The door frame in the back door is notched with the height of all my brothers and sisters. I was just about to beat Brian, my second-oldest brother, when the painters 'cleaned' it up and painted over all the marks. But I know it's still there, under all that perfect paint and putty is a reminder of what we once were, a family: mum, dad, brothers, sisters and me.

My brothers and sisters have all moved out anyway. They all moved to the city, or went to another state to go to uni. That just left mum, dad and me. Then dad got cancer.

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The news of Father's disappearance was such a shock to mother. It wasn't that she gave up living, she would never have left us on our own. Her heart could not simply help but break, so deep was the love between father and her. Consumption was only the symptom of the thing that killed my mother, the thought that she would never see her William ever again.

Uncle Samson Teak had arrived very soon after he had found out that his favourite sister had fallen ill. His ship, 'The Carter's Chance', had been docked in Bristol when the news had got to him. He left his ship in the hands of his first mate and rushed to be at his sister's side. It was only a matter of a week before she had passed on. Uncle Samson, dear old unmarried Uncle Samson, now found himself the legal gaurdian of all four of the Carter children. It only took us a few heart beats to agree when he suggested that the only way that he could ensure that we were adequately cared for was to join him on his ship.

Uncle Samson had always had a soft spot for us as a family, mother was his only sister. They had once had another brother, but they never mentioned him and we had assumed that he had died when still a child. Running away from England, home and all the misery that had come of our lives was made all the better by the fact that it was Uncle Samson who was now our protector, our guide to a brave new world of adventure and opportunity. To us, the life of this merchant seaman was the stuff of our wildest dreams and a gateway to the world that our father had spoken of.

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Mum worked hard to try and keep the house once dad had died. The bank had let us stay while dad was alive, but it wasn't long after he was dead that they said we would have to clear in the next few months if we were to sell the house and have any money at all.

Which brings me to today. The worst day of my life. EVER! We walk through the house and see the ghosts of so many happy memories lingering, begging us not to go. We say goodbye to old bedrooms, kitchen cupboards and favourite hidey-holes were so much was planned and imagined that whole worlds could have been made from our dreams. I see mum is crying. I know it's not her fault, it's just the way things are. But there is NOTHING in the world that can make me feel better sitting here in the seat of our car, watching my world stay behind as I drive off behind a moving van that takes me to a world that has one major problem with it.

IT'S NOT HOME!!!!!!!

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But Uncle Samson had a surprise for us. Shortly before his death, our father had sent Samson a letter talking about a discovery that he and his crew were about to make, how excited they all were and how it had something to do with capturing a pirate's treasure. Father had even written Samson the coordinates of their last fix so that, if anything had happened to him, Samson could come to look for him.

“It's right strange”, began Samson. "But your father's ship seemed to have set course for the Islands of Bermuda, from what other ships who saw them last have told me. According to those same sources Blackbeard's ship, 'Queen Anne's Revenge' was sailing just over your father's horizon.” The silence in the room was tangible and broken only by Thomas who voiced the question that all of us children wanted to ask.

“So, is there any chance that he is alive?” Uncle Samson just looked at the floor of his cabin, searching the grain of the timber for the words.
“Well, to be honest, no.” he finally replied. “If they ran foul of Blackbeard than I give them very little chance of survival if they had been caught. And in those waters it is more a case of which Pirate you were caught by as to the likelihood of your survival. Not many leave survivors though, I'm afraid.” It felt like father had died all over again.

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Our new 'house' is horrible. There's no backyard and no trees. No room for a dog and definitely no room for us to LIVE! We've had to move in to an apartment in a block of townhouses, one of those tight, miserable places that no one should be forced to live in. Our flat is right next to some old geezer who lives alone with his cats. Some of the other tenants say that he used to be a sailor, others that he was a pilot with the RAF in WW2 and still others that he was a trained assassin for the Americans. I think he's just lonely.

Nobody else in the block wants to talk to him. I know how he feels.

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“But,” Uncle Samson started again. “Your Father's instructions were to come looking and, what with your mother and all, I have not got back to do so. We set course for the Carribean.”

The idea of being on a ship, sailing to far off and exotic lands is so romantic. The real tragedy is that the reality of the journey falls far short of the expectations that one had at the outset of the journey. All of us were violently seasick for the first week of our journey. Once we had enough strength to crawl onto the deck we discovered that we were only a week in to the journey and that we still had a month of travel ahead of us before reaching the coordinates given to us by our father.

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