‘It’s actually a guest room,’ he explains.
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to get settled.’ He hands me an A4 file. ‘I’ve emailed these to you, but these are back-up copies of the itinerary for the rest of today. I will do the same thing every morning, first thing. I’ve learned not to totally rely on wi-fi out at sea.’
‘Wise,’ I say, taking the folder and removing the first page, skimming the instructions.
‘No need to read them now,’ he says. ‘We can meet tomorrow morning in the conference room. You can ask any questions then. I’ll expect to see you on the main deck at six o’clock for cocktail hour and sail-away drinks. You can get to meet everyone properly then. Professional mingling.’
I resist the urge to make a face.
‘Sure.’
Thomas disappears, leaving the door open. I wait a few minutes, then shut it gently behind him. Finally alone, I take a deep breath. I check my phone for messages. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do this, that once I was away I wouldn’t give Whoever It Is any more power over me. Easier said than done because I also need reassurance. I send Sam a message.
Important things to tell you.
Curiosity is a good hook. Now that I’m here, it’s time for him to reveal his latest scheme. Despite all the badness, all the dark stuff, he was a big part of my life – he was my husband. Nothing changes that, no matter what. I keep checking for a reply. No response. I poke again.
I’m on board.
Still nothing. Doubt slithers, worming into my thoughts.
I sit on the bed closest to the porthole and study the cabin again. On the desk is a fruit basket bursting with bananas, mangoes, grapes and apples. Beautifully arranged on a china plate: olives, crisps, celery, carrots, dips, caviar and salmon canapes. I go to open a small fridge in the cabin. Champagne and bottles of still water. Clearly, these are considered the two essential drinks for the next ten days. I smell the pale pink roses in a small, crystal vase. Heaven.
I sit back on my bed. I have already decided that it is mine because it’s closest to the porthole. First come, first served and all that. I slip off my shoes and lie down, accidentally squashing the perfection of the towel art – a swan. Sam had a thing about towel art. He used to compliment the staff who created it, so much so that it became a game, almost, to see who could create the best, most elaborate pieces for him. It made Sam feel guilty about unravelling the towels after his showers. I used to tease him about it.
‘Oooh, look, you’ve just pulled the trunk off an elephant or the wings off a poor swan.’
He would flick me with the towel and I would dodge him, laughing.
I wish Sam had been who I thought he was.
Outside, I can hear the screams and laughter of those braving the water slide.
I close my eyes and feel myself drifting off. Just ten minutes . . . In the background I hear laughter, and a door slams. I familiarise myself with the feel of the yacht. I used to familiarise myself with the sights, sounds and smells of each new ship. The rocking movement is barely perceptible; ditto with the slight creaks and groans. The dominant smells are of flowers, fresh linen and the sweetness of ripe fruit. The stress of the past few years dissipates. All is well.
The door opens. I open my eyes and leap up. I don’t want to be caught snoozing.
‘Charlotte! Oh. My. God! You’re my cabin mate?’
‘Lucy?’
What a joy to see a familiar face.
I haven’t seen Lucy for over two years, not since the Alaskan cruise, but we have liked and commented on our respective social media posts from time to time. She looks exactly the same. Tanned, make-up done to perfection, long eyelashes and blood-red false nails. Her curly, dark hair is shorter, but that’s the only difference.
We hug.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asks.
‘Assistant PA,’ I say. ‘You?’
‘Beauty therapist. I’m also their hairdresser, which I’m really nervous about as I’m rusty. Well, that’s putting it politely. I’m actually pretty bloody useless. I trained when I was seventeen but never really pursued it beyond that. But you say what you have to to get these kind of jobs, don’t you? I was so fed up of having to do a hard product sell after every spa treatment on board the ships I last worked on. I worked in a clinic where they specialised in cosmetic procedures like Botox for a while but I missed being at sea.’
I remember her mentioning it on Facebook a while back.
This kind of thing used to happen all the time, even on larger ships. It is a very small world in this industry but given that this yacht, although magnificent, is on a much smaller scale than the cruise liners, it never crossed my mind that I would see a friendly face. Mind you, that can backfire too. Sometimes it was hard to shake off the people I didn’t like.
‘Is Sam here too?’
I hesitate.
‘We split up.’
‘Oh. Sorry to hear that. You guys were so cool together. I did hear that he’d stopped working in the casinos, but I just assumed that you two were together doing some kind of shore-based work.’
I wonder what else Lucy had heard about us? Even though I’d been reassured by ex-colleagues that the anonymous tip-off that a staff member was a smuggler – which had resulted in the thorough customs search – had been hushed up, there’s no way snippets of speculation wouldn’t have filtered through the vast crew gossip system. Everyone knew I had been stopped and briefly detained.
‘Sam wasn’t the man I thought I married. He was . . .’ I stop. ‘I don’t even know where he is at the moment.’ True.
‘Well, onwards and upwards, as they say, and anyway – this is amazing!’ She glances around the cabin. ‘We are going to have such a blast.’
Lucy unzips one of her many bags and starts unpacking. I check my phone. Nothing. I get a sudden urge to unburden myself of at least one secret.
‘You won’t believe this, but I know one of the main guests. As in . . . really know.’
I don’t know what makes me blurt this out. I am usually a lot more guarded but it’s so nice to have someone to confide in, especially after the shock of seeing Harry/Harrison. Lucy always loved gossip.
Her eyes widen.
‘Who?’
‘Harrison. Only I knew him as Harry.’
‘Tell me more. Was he the reason you and Sam split up?’
‘No, Harrison was pre-Sam, a while ago when I worked in a ski chalet. I was his secret though. I don’t think he wanted his posh friends to know.’
‘So, I’m guessing he won’t want his girlfriend to know either,’ she says. ‘But don’t worry about it. If he’s horrible or disrespectful in any way, I will make it my personal mission to ensure that he is one of the first in my chair. He can be my experiment to see quite how rusty my skills with the scissors or clippers are.’
We both laugh. It feels good. I have missed the quick familiarity and the picking-up-where-we-left-off of working friendships out at sea.
‘Seriously, though,’ Lucy continues. ‘I’m hoping that they all just want their hair in an up-do, or curled or straightened. Simple stuff. My great plan is to wow them so much with my beauty talents that they won’t worry too much about their hair.’
‘Excellent strategy.’
I had forgotten how much Lucy loved to talk. I glance at my watch.
‘I should get ready for the sail-away drinks. I don’t think Thomas will be impressed if I’m late,’ I say, pulling a face.
‘Oh, do you not like him?’ Lucy says. ‘I think he seems like a darling.’
‘He’s OK,’ I say. ‘A little intense.’
I shower, get dressed and reapply my make-up. By the time I’m ready to leave, Lucy is still getting ready.
‘I’ll join you up there shortly,’ she says.
I pick up my handbag. It will not leave my sight. It’s not that I don’t trust Lucy, it’s that I don’t trust anyone. People trusted me in the pa
st when they shouldn’t have.
‘Sure. See you later,’ I say to Lucy, closing the door to our cabin behind me.
I decide to try out the elevator. It can’t be as bad as Thomas suggests. I press the call button. There’s a few moments’ wait, then the doors judder open. I am about to change my mind, I don’t fancy being stuck inside. But Harry – Harrison – steps out. There is an awkward pause where we both hesitate before I step into the tiny lift. He follows me back inside. We’re immediately too close together. The doors shut. There is a slight jolt as we begin to move.
I pause. ‘Hello, Harry.’
‘Charlotte, nice to see you. Listen, let’s keep quiet about having met before,’ he says. ‘There’s no point in complicating things. Can I trust that you will let sleeping dogs lie?’
It sounds as if he has been rehearsing those sentences from the moment he saw me.
He looks pale. He should. I remember lots of things about him. Things I know he wouldn’t want me to share with Josephine.
I put him out of his misery.
‘My lips are sealed,’ I say.
The lift stops. The doors judder open.
‘But,’ I say, unable to resist, ‘it would be nice to catch up properly at some point.’
‘Of course,’ he says, without smiling. ‘Thank you, Charlotte. I’m glad you understand.’
Thing is, I don’t understand. Not yet. Why would Josephine care about a fling years before the two of them met? I intend to find out.
‘A pleasure,’ I say, stepping out of the lift.
A man who is polishing one of the tables looks at me as I emerge. I smile at him and he reciprocates. I note him clock Harrison exiting the lift behind me. Up high, on a shelf behind a vase, I’m pretty certain that I catch the slight shine of a hidden camera lens.
It is a good reminder that not much will go unseen while onboard.
SEVENTEEN
Then
The Caribbean
Sam began to withdraw. It was subtle. Surface-wise, we were the same. We were Charlotte and Sam, newlyweds, with dreams of our future. I knew that over time love became less intense but I missed the old Sam. I wanted him back.
It began with lies. Silly ones. For example, Sam would tell me that he had a shift in the casino when he didn’t, or he would say that he had been in our cabin when he hadn’t. At first, I shrugged it off. Maybe I had misunderstood, hadn’t heard properly. But that wasn’t the case.
We gave up on cold weather and returned to the Caribbean. Sam perked up, seemed happier, but for me, paradise had begun to look the same: sun, blue skies, rare storms, beaches we weren’t allowed to visit because they were for cruise guests only. Luxury suites with private pools that weren’t for us. Tailoring dreams for other people. The unhappier I became, the more money I spent, until one day I concluded that we needed to spice things up a little. New stories, new experiences, a date for our endgame. Proper, concrete plans to stop us drifting.
Sam grinned. ‘I like the sound of spicing things up.’
It fired up hope in me. All was not lost, it had just been temporarily buried. We had a fortnight off. We flew to England to check on our house, then to the South of France and Monaco for two days on a superyacht that belonged to a friend of Sam’s, and he promised me that one day we would own our own as we sat out on deck, sipping cocktails at sunrise. Sam’s friend, Owen, was dull and liked the sound of his own voice, but he was ‘a busy person’ and spent most of his time taking calls from ‘Russia, Malaysia, Cyprus, New York’ as if each country itself was a real person.
‘Where did you meet him?’ I whispered to Sam.
‘In my first ever casino job I worked with him,’ he said. ‘He was patient with me. He was brought up by someone whose primary belief was that “the world helps those who help themselves”. He had started out with small, low-level cons. The usual,’ Sam added, as if I would automatically know what that meant.
I knew about the common tourist traps: the friendship bracelets wound tightly around wrists and aggressively sold, the tourist asking you to take a photo of them with their phone, then dropping it as you hand it back then demanding payment to get it fixed. These types of things had always just seemed annoying to me, rather than blatant theft.
‘And look where he is now,’ said Sam, watching him on the phone.
If I could have waved a magic wand and given Sam everything his old friend had, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. He appeared to idolise his friend, spent hours talking to him while I sunbathed or shopped alone. Sam insisted on taking him out to dinner ‘to say thank you’ and I felt a mixture of pride and pain as Sam paid the extortionate bill even though we were less well-off than Owen. His wealth had shown me that we still had a long way to go.
Sam liked us both to wear designer clothes, real jewels and sample the best of everything. I did too. We lived two lives: the one where we lived in cramped conditions, worked long hours for relatively little pay, and The Other Life, as I referred to it in my head.
On the flight back to Barbados we both felt a restlessness and a discontent that although they had been brewing for a while, felt significant. We stayed with JJ (same nice girlfriend, Jilly – Sam had been wrong) and had barbecues on the beach, swam in the sea every day. I did normal things like collecting seashells, shopping at the local markets, sleeping late every morning. Maybe we didn’t need more money. Maybe we just needed more time.
Sam disagreed.
‘I’m bored,’ he said. ‘I want to get back to work. I’m looking forward to spicing things up.’
On our last night, I got up to get a glass of water long after midnight. JJ was sitting alone outside on the porch. I joined him for a beer.
‘How long have you known Sam?’ I asked.
‘Years and years.’
‘What was he like?’
JJ gave it pause for thought.
‘Restless,’ he finally said. ‘I wasn’t surprised that he married you, though.’
‘Oh?’
‘He was always looking for an anchor.’
‘I’m not sure I appreciate that analogy,’ I laughed.
‘Sorry, that came out wrong.’
‘And you, why did you give up ship life?’
‘I like my own bed,’ he said.
I swung gently on the hammock chair.
‘I know what you’re both up to,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m here, if you ever need me,’ he said. ‘That’s all I want to say. I know how persuasive Sam can be. Just remember, he will always save himself first. I am his friend, but I like you too.’
I felt disloyal and uncomfortable. Back in bed, I tried to wake Sam up but he was too pissed, and come morning it felt like a dream. JJ acted as if the conversation had never happened either. I filed it away and tried to forget about it.
I wanted Sam and me to work. I loved him. I believed in what we were doing. That’s what’s so hard to remember now, that I really loved him. Now that I hate what he did, it seems easier to look back and wonder at my own choices. Without the lens of love, things look different. I get that now. If there was a magic pill that made people fall out of love with the wrong people, the world would be a different place. It’s easy to look back and think that you would have done this, that or the other, but you have to remember how you felt. That’s what I tell myself when I have been too hard on myself. Remember how I felt.
Our sixth ship started off as a disaster. We were in separate cabins, both of us sharing with other people. I hated my position in Sales and Excursions. It was one thing persuading people to donate money to Sam and me, another for a giant corporation. All the fun and inspiration had been sucked out of us.
Then, we met Maggie and Colin. The lottery winners.
Colin and his friends loved to confuse and humiliate the serving staff, as if it were a sport. They treated them as if they had no one else to serve but them. They created drama or made complaints where none were needed or when a simple,
polite request to tweak a meal or have something changed would have sufficed. It aggrieved me further because I knew that one of the waiters they were belittling hadn’t seen his family for months and had a lot of people who were relying on him financially. I saw red. Something snapped.
It was the smirk on Colin’s face that got me. That, and the fact he most certainly did not deserve his lottery win. Why him of all the people on the planet?
I followed him out to the smoking zone where he had his pre-dinner cigar every night.
‘Mr Williams,’ I said. ‘I have some good news for you. As one of the ship’s most valued guests you have won your own seat in the exclusive casino tonight.’
His eyes lit up. He believed me. He actually believed there was such a thing.
‘I have been sent to personally escort you to the casino,’ I explained.
As soon as he had finished his cigar (the smell made me feel sick), I walked along the deck with him. He was drunk, more so than I had originally realised. I got him a glass of water from one of the bars before I guided him into the lift and up to the VIP section. One of the Japanese restaurants had a private dining area and I had convinced the manager that Colin had asked me to make a reservation on his behalf.
As Colin walked along the stepping stones, past the fishpond, he wobbled. After steadying himself, he made it to the other side and he smiled at the view. Past the bamboo plants and the indoor waterfalls, a table had been laid with an array of sushi, sashimi, tempura and small bowls of miso soup. No expense had been spared because it was all going on Colin’s account. I took his cruise card to the till to process it myself. His guests joined him, all thanking him for his generosity, to which he smiled and nodded, then winked at me as though we shared a secret.
Sam made an appearance after the meal with his best playing cards for a special, exclusive, cash-only game. Colin had this ‘thing’ about carrying a wallet full of cash so he couldn’t argue. I sat at one end of the table where an array of knives not yet cleared away from dinner were laid out in front of me; one was especially long for slicing tuna. Once the game was underway without complaint and Colin had resigned himself to losing, I returned them to the kitchen before the chefs reported them missing. I sliced my finger on one in the process and had to wash the knife and my blood away in the sink.
The Ex-Husband Page 13