Never mind her degrees, undergraduate and graduate, a redundant pedigree that appeared to have led her no further than to housewifery, in the end.

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Never mind that her route lay across more than six kilometres of choppy tidal water and Ms Sherr had not swum more than a kilometre in decades.

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Ms. Karoustas, now 43, said it had never crossed her mind that she would one day go back to Germany.

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