Chapter 8
‘I’m quite keen to have a shark in mine,’ Millie was saying, paintbrush held aloft. ‘Or maybe a whale. I can’t decide which. There’s going to be a dolphin, too. Maybe a pod of them? They’re my favourites. Sometimes you can see them off the coast at home – have you ever seen one IRL?’
Hannah peered at Millie’s painting. She’d gone abstract, setting the still life on a raft placed directly in the ocean.
The girl’s unbridled imagination reminded Hannah of her little brother – he loved drawing, too, with his superbly sharpened pencils, although he preferred the detailed accuracy of buildings, with added prehistoric creatures. A Pterodactyl, maybe a Spinosaurus.
‘I’m a bit worried about your oranges,’ Hannah said, leaning across and pointing to the blobs of colour on the raft. ‘If they roll into the ocean the shark might eat them.’
Millie giggled, then recovered herself, deadpanning as she said, ‘Sharks don’t like oranges. They prefer pineapples.’
‘Or people,’ Hannah said, a light shudder spidering its way down her spine.
‘Apparently there were less than fifty shark attacks on people last year in the whole of the world – only about six were fatal. I looked it up,’ Millie said, her expression remaining serious. ‘Sharks get a really bad press.’
‘I still don’t fancy sharing space with them,’ Hannah said.
Millie leant towards her canvas, swirling more cerulean blue into her seascape as she said, ‘That’s why dolphins are so epic; they keep the sharks away.’
‘Do they?’
But Millie’s attention was lost in her ocean scene and Hannah glanced at her own work, still only at the pencil sketching stage and lacking the freedom of expression shown in Millie’s painting.
Before she could decide to do anything about changing hers up, Hannah became aware of a third person closing in on their painting party.
Wearing a distinctive white shirt with black and gold bits on the shoulders, Captain Louis King imposed himself on her space.
Was he going to praise her for finding someone to spend some time with? Or congratulate her for being out of her cabin without falling apart because she was cruising on her own?
Was she being, maybe, a touch melodramatic?
Too late to formulate answers to any of those questions, she realised, but not for the frown to embed itself onto her forehead as he approached.
‘Hello – it is Hannah, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You came to visit the bridge?’
Hannah supposed there was no reason for him to remember her any more clearly – apart from being the sad woman he’d felt sorry for because she was taking her honeymoon trip alone.
He’d probably had dozens of more interesting people visiting the bridge since she had.
But his features were as vivid in her memory as they now were in the flesh.
Yes, he was still tall, his gaze still heavy-lidded and with a focus that made her feel as though she was the only person in the room.
‘Oh, hello – yes. Thank you for showing me around the other day. Very interesting.’
‘This is your work?’ he said, gaze moving to her drawing.
Hannah felt colour blooming from her neck, threatening to invade her cheeks. ‘It is.’
‘It’s really good, isn’t it?’ Millie piped up, her paintbrush passing dangerously close to the bright white cotton of his shirt as she turned to address him. ‘Hannah’s an excellent artist. Don’t you think?’
Millie stared at him intently until he began to nod.
‘Thanks, Millie,’ Hannah said. ‘So are you.’
‘Yeah. Right. My waves look like my gran’s hair when she’s fresh out of the hairdresser’s. Not that her hair is blue – it’s like a silvery-grey, but you know what I mean.’
Millie bumped her paintbrush up, round and down to emphasise the shape of her gran’s curls, the captain taking a step back as blue paint splattered the studio floor.
‘Oops,’ Millie said, turning to search for April. ‘Maybe I should get some tissue or something. Clean up the mess.’ Scrambling to her feet, she lodged the brush on her easel and wandered away.
‘Nice kid,’ the captain said. He pulled in a breath and brought his gaze back to her. ‘Listen, I just wanted to— The other day I was rather— I just wanted to say I didn’t invite you to visit the bridge out of some sense of…’
He tailed off, and Hannah felt herself bristling all over again. Forcing down her desire to tell him where to stick his well-meant but ill-expressed sentiment, she did her best to unpick her resident frown and swap the expression for one full of carefree abandon.
‘Don’t worry about it, Captain. It was very kind of you to invite me to look around – and I loved meeting your cat. But you don’t need to give my presence on your ship another thought. I might be cruising alone, but I still intend to have a wonderful time.’
She almost added ‘without any help from you’.
Being intentionally rude had never come easily to Hannah, and although it could be argued she had extenuating circumstances that excused a bit of bad behaviour, she buttoned down the words and did her best to smile at him.
Wondered why she felt the need to treat him with such negativity, when he was being so friendly and agreeable.
It wasn’t his fault her fiancé had slept with another woman, was it?
‘Well, that’s excellent news. If there’s anything I can do – anything any of the crew can do to help make your cruise exceed your expectations, please don’t hesitate to ask.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Hannah repeated, wondering how best to end their awkward interaction. Abruptly she stood, her unexpected action sending him a step or two backwards, towards Millie’s easel.
She swallowed. He was very tall. Taller than she remembered.
Hannah liked tall men. She batted away the thought and, for want of something better to do, extended a hand for him to shake – a strangely formal gesture that seemed, once she’d done it, completely random.
The warmth of his hand around hers and the firmness of the shake had Hannah taking a deep breath, smiling again, fleetingly, before she retook her seat.
He took her action as a dismissal, turning to retrace his steps as Millie sped towards her.
A glance at his retreating figure had Hannah covering her mouth with a hand as she noticed the smudge of blue on the back of his shirt, stark against its perfect crisp whiteness.
Millie grinned at the captain as he passed her, the grin turning to a look of horror as she too clocked the paint on his back.
Ruth checked her watch – she should already have been at the gallery to collect Millie but had got caught up watching a ballroom dancing demonstration in the theatre.
She hadn’t really appreciated the breadth of events and entertainments that would be available and although the waltzing was probably the last thing Millie – and definitely Nathan – would want to watch, she’d enjoyed it.
Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to have had a husband who wanted to dance with her like that.
Or at all, if she was being brutally honest. Trev always claimed to have two left feet and preferred to prop up the bar rather than venture onto the dance floor.
Another cliché, she realised, the old chestnut of being a bloke who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – dance.
Ruth couldn’t help but wonder if he’d favoured watching over doing so that he could, well, watch.
Or keep his options open, maybe. Lurk at the bar in the hopes that someone younger, prettier, sexier than Ruth had wandered into his vicinity.
Neither of them had been spring chickens when they married, and sometimes Ruth wondered if it had been more of a convenient arrangement for Trev, to have someone to sort his laundry for him and cook dinner.
Someone who was nearing the final curtain of their biological clock and was, therefore, more malleable. Vulnerable, even.
Ruth pulled in a breath as she beetled towards the lifts to head up to the art gallery.
However she framed it, however shit it had ended up being, she’d got two beautiful kids out of the deal.
And even though Nathan was showing all the tendencies of your typical angsty teen, she loved her son with a fierce intensity it was difficult to describe.
He might be a pain in the posterior, but she’d throw herself in front of a bus for him, no question.
And Millie – well, Ruth couldn’t do anything other than grin as she headed for the studio end of the gallery.
She could spot Millie’s paintings a mile off.
Even when they weren’t aboard a cruise ship, surrounded by an actual ocean, her pictures almost always entertained an element of wild water.
In this painting she’d gone all out. Dolphins leapt from a frothy-looking sea, with a signature shark’s fin lurking in the background.
For some reason there was a life raft in the foreground, piled high with what looked like orange hockey balls, a couple of lemons and a wonky jug.
A glance at the still life in the room had Ruth revising her thoughts. Oranges. They were oranges.
‘I got blue paint on the captain,’ Millie said, as a greeting.
‘How did you manage that?’ Ruth asked.
‘To be fair, it was probably my fault.’
The voice came from behind Ruth, but it was vaguely familiar. She turned to greet Hannah, grinning with a mixture of embarrassment and recognition.
‘Hannah! Hi. How are you?’
Millie swivelled her gaze between the two of them. ‘Do you know everyone on board, Hannah?’
‘No, but I did meet your mum by chance the other day.’ Hannah turned her attention to Ruth. ‘I’m sorry I upped and left – it was all a bit too much,’ she said, wiping some freshly washed brushes in tissue to dry them.
‘I should be the one apologising to you. I overstepped. As usual.’
Millie rolled her eyes. ‘What did you do this time, Mum?’
‘What did I do? Never mind me, how did you cover the captain with paint? I’m mortified.’
‘Don’t be,’ Hannah said. ‘He did it to himself, backed up on the brush. Millie wasn’t even here. Just one of those things.’
‘And he didn’t even realise, so that’s fine, I think. It’s exciting though, to know someone who knows the captain of the ship, don’t you think, Mum?’
Hannah frowned. ‘I don’t know him. I visited the bridge, that’s all. He was very kind.’
Millie tilted her head. ‘Yeah. Right.’
Hannah frowned, then changed the subject. ‘I didn’t realise Ruth’s your mum. You wouldn’t think on a ship with this many passengers anyone would see the same people more than once, would you?’
‘I’m kind of hoping I don’t see my brother more than once the entire trip,’ Millie said, unaware of how her words stabbed at Ruth’s heart.
‘You don’t mean that, Mils,’ she said.
‘I do. I mean, I get that we are all sleeping in the same cabin – bleurgh – so I have to see him then, but the rest of the time is what I’m talking about.’
‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ Hannah asked.
Millie’s floodgates opened. ‘What’s right with Nathan would be a better question. Do you have a brother?’
‘I do,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s much younger than me, so maybe it isn’t the same, but I only find him annoying some of the time.’
‘Well, Nathan is annoying even when he’s asleep. He breathes so loudly, sometimes he even snores. And the smells he makes…’ Millie wafted a hand in front of her face, and Ruth was mortified all over again.
‘Millie, stop it. Poor Nathan.’
Hannah slid onto the stool beside Millie, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘Let you into a secret, Millie. They all do that – even the fully adult versions.’
Millie wrinkled her nose. ‘Really? Might have to become a lesbian in that case.’
Hannah stifled a laugh and despite further mortification at her daughter’s lack of reserve, Ruth had to grin, her spirits lifting further as they discussed Millie’s painting, the fact that with Hannah’s help, she’d created a seascape with more movement in its waves than ever before.
Then Millie explained to Ruth what was so good about Hannah’s piece, that even though she’d barely started adding paint, Millie was already learning loads about how to be, as she described Hannah, a ‘proper’ artist.
‘No such thing as a proper artist, Millie,’ Hannah said. ‘Everyone who picks up a pencil or a paintbrush is an artist – the rest is down to practising hard to increase your skills, and people’s semantics.’
‘What’s semantics?’ Millie said.
‘Nitpicking,’ Hannah said and then smiled as Ruth asked if she would like to join them in one of the all-inclusive restaurants, the Harvest Basket, for an early supper, and they agreed to meet there at half six to try to beat the rush.