Chapter 4
Ruth Herring had always hated her name – but it was possible she had never loathed it quite as much as she did when the perky twenty-something blonde checked her name on the passenger roster and explained how she and her children could get to their cabin.
It was impossible to ignore the smirk on the woman’s face.
True enough, that could be her natural expression, Ruth had thought, but it was equally likely she was doing her best to hide her laughter.
Given the chance, Ruth would have ditched the name alongside the man who’d provided it. Preferably straight after their divorce. Except that would have left her with a different surname to her children, and Ruth wanted that less than she wanted the damn silly name.
But having the name of a fish, on a cruise… Why hadn’t it occurred to her that she and her children might become the object of other people’s humour?
By contrast, her youngest didn’t seem the least bit perturbed.
‘Herring is a fish, so it’s like we’re experts at being on a ship even if we’ve never done it before,’ Millie said, the few months she had left as a pre-teen acting as a natural buoyancy aid ahead of the universal apathy she would no doubt sink into shortly after she turned thirteen.
Nathan – sixteen, but quite often going on four and a half, in Ruth’s opinion – expressed his reaction to his sister’s statement with a laugh loaded with condescension.
‘Are you mad?’ he said, lounging in a way he was sure made him look far older than he was, but which put Ruth in mind of a spider sliding down a greased wall. ‘Well, of course you are. But you sound like a complete cretin. How the hell is having a fishy surname any help?’
‘Language,’ Ruth said, automatically. It was like fighting a giant wave, if she was being honest with herself.
Nathan had been experimenting for years with what he could get away with in front of his mother, and ‘hell’ was on the milder side.
She could only guess at the words he used when he was with his mates.
‘English,’ he said, with equal automation. ‘It’s what I use most of the time.’
‘Yeah, unless he’s talking in Klingon,’ Millie said.
Nathan frowned. ‘That’s our thing. I only do it when I’m with Dad. Which isn’t much these days.’
His frown deepened, and Ruth felt the instant stab of guilt.
It still hit hard, every time either of her children mentioned their father, especially with the obviously loaded delivery Nathan had managed.
The divorce had been spectacularly unpleasant, and everyone involved had spent a long time licking their wounds.
It wasn’t that she had ever stopped them from seeing their father – far from it.
But the truth was something she did try hard to shield them from.
That now Trev had a new and rather pert young girlfriend, he had become increasingly unavailable for his children.
But somehow this seemed to be all her fault. When Nathan phoned his father to ask if they could go to the local football game, or meet up to watch a Star Trek film, and he got an increasingly well-oiled brush-off, it was always Ruth’s fault.
It often seemed to Ruth that it was just as well women didn’t get to see the small print involved in becoming a mother and raising children – otherwise no sane person would sign up for it.
By the time you realised your life would literally never be your own again, it was already far too late – and ironically, by then there was no way she had wanted it any other way, either.
But it did seem it was completely possible for a father to simply walk away.
To be honest, Trev’s behaviour was one of the main reasons for booking this cruise. Perhaps it wasn’t something to place at the top of the list of activities for a couple of teenage kids, but Ruth wanted this Christmas to be something different and out of the ordinary. Something properly special.
And so when Trev had informed her there would be no way he would be able to see his children over the festive period because he and Janey were heading away to a tiny cottage in Northumberland to spend some quality time together, Ruth had quashed her anger by heading for the local travel agency, collecting up as many brochures as she could carry, and leaving before the travel agent could end her phone call and demand them all back.
After a bottle of Malbec and a good cry, Ruth had made a massive decision.
The three of them would take a cruise to the Caribbean.
Tipsy she might have been, emotionally wrung out she definitely was, but there was determination in her decision, too.
Trev could take Northumberland and stick it where the sun wouldn’t feel like shining, and she would take her children on the trip of a lifetime, to a destination with wall-to-wall sunshine.
Something she’d always fancied, but Trev had never been interested in.
There was a kernel of logic there, too. Millie loved marine life, especially dolphins – strained to see a sign of them whenever they were anywhere near the coast. And Nathan, regardless of his lethargic attitude to any suggestion Ruth made, had posters of a desert island on his bedroom wall.
He maintained it was only because he couldn’t be bothered to take them down, but Ruth was sure there was more depth to the reasons for them still being there.
Plus, they had all been to hell and back as the wheels had turned like a slow-motion steamroller during the divorce and subsequent settlements.
It had all taken its toll on Nathan’s GCSE results and hadn’t done Millie any favours – and Ruth wanted to put some of that right.
Or at least try to. Although maybe missing the end of the school term wasn’t the best way to achieve her aims. Ruth sighed. Adulting was so bloody difficult.
‘Yeah, but what has our surname got to do with being on a boat?’ Nathan said, his words dragging Ruth back to the here and now, as she stood in their cabin, cramped with a single bed and bunk beds for the kids slotted into a space not much larger than her galley kitchen at home.
‘It’s a ship, Nath. Not a boat. And stand up straight, will you? Your spine will thank you in thirty years’ time.’
Ruth’s words were greeted with another snort of disdain and Nathan shoved his squashy bag full of clothes onto the bottom bunk.
‘She can have the top bunk, I don’t care.’
‘Maybe I don’t want the top bunk, Nathan. Mum, I might have wanted the bottom bunk, and he didn’t even ask. Why is he always so selfish?’ Millie’s tone spiralled into a wail.
Ruth sighed. Standard operating procedure for her kids, to argue over something they both knew they really wanted anyway.
‘He’s not being selfish, Mils – he’s actually being kind.’ Ruth nearly added ‘for once’ but stopped herself. ‘He knows how much you like the top bunk.’
‘No. I’m not doing it for her benefit. I’m doing it because I read this cruise is all-inclusive, so I’m going to be drinking loads of alcohol, and I don’t want to fall out of bed.’
‘You will not be drinking alcohol on this trip, Nathan. You’re only sixteen; they won’t serve you.
And anyway, I don’t know which brochure you were looking at, but this cruise is not all-inclusive, certainly not where alcohol is concerned, so don’t go getting any ideas. I have a budget, like always.’
Nathan tutted, looking in that moment the spitting image of his father as he regarded her with contempt. ‘Dad lets me drink when I’m with him.’
‘Well, you’re not with your bloody father now, are you?’ It was Ruth’s turn to lose her cool, her own voice rising with exasperation.
‘No. I’m not, am I? God, this Christmas is going to be so shit,’ Nathan said, pulling open the cabin door and heading through it.
Biting back her anger, Ruth followed him into the corridor. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Anywhere you two aren’t.’
Nathan had always been able to conjure an impressive flounce, and he did so as he delivered the parting shot and headed off along the corridor.
‘Have you got your phone with you?’ Ruth called after him. ‘Don’t get lost.’
The look he gave her over his shoulder had Ruth biting back tears.
‘How could I get lost? I’m on a bloody boat.’
He slouched away, hands in pockets, looking like he had the troubles of the world on his shoulders. And that it was all her fault. She’d got it all wrong again, when really what she wanted to do was make everything all right.