Chapter 4
4
When my alarm goes off, I have no idea where I am.
Dark. Enclosed. Like a cupboard.
My breath catches in my chest with fear and then I remember.
Mallorca. I’m a yachtie now.
It’s 7 a.m. and we didn’t get back until, when?
Two?
I stretch, feeling an ache in my calves from wearing heels last night, and swing my legs down and stand, careful not to bang my head on the top bunk.
I turn on the bathroom light, blinking until my eyes adjust. Kelsey’s bunk is empty, the bed still made, her washbag open with make-up spilling out, the way she left it when we went to dinner.
Shit. We couldn’t find her when we left and Louise said it was fine.
She’d follow us back eventually; she was probably hooking up with the hot barman.
She’s probably on her way back now , I tell myself as I stand under the steaming water of the shower.
Doing the walk of no shame.
The boat is quiet when I leave the cabin.
I make a coffee – there’s something wrong with the machine, coffee splutters from the nozzle and milk pools in the tray, but coffee is coffee – and take it upstairs.
Through the windows, I can see the sun is rising, the sky a deep orange.
Movement catches my eye and I turn, but it’s a reflection of the water shimmering over the polished wooden wall.
As soon as I see one, I see multiple others on the ceilings and surfaces.
It feels magical. I wish Adam was up too and we could sit and watch the world wake up together, but I know he’ll still be fast asleep.
He is not an early-morning person.
Outside, I curl up on one of the daybeds on the aft deck.
I warm my hands on the mug and look out over the water.
I am here. This is now.
I hold out my coffee and take a photo to post to Instagram and the family group chat.
‘Morning.’
After a few minutes, Louise appears, also with a coffee, and sits down opposite me.
She’s wearing shorts and a hoodie.
Her feet, like mine, are bare, toenails painted dark red.
She’s not wearing make-up and she looks tired; the skin under her eyes is smudged lilac.
‘Kelsey’s back, yes? ’
I shake my head.
‘She’s not in her bunk. ’
‘Shit,’ Louise breathes, her eyebrows knitting together.
‘I’ll text her again.
Not that she’ll even be awake yet. ’
While Louise is on her phone, I see that Mum is typing in our chat.
‘Where is dishwasher salt???’
Bloody hell.
I tell her – under the sink – and she immediately asks how to refill it.
While I’m googling for example photos I can screenshot and send, Louise says, ‘She hasn’t been on WhatsApp.
The captain’s going to lose it. ’
‘Is this not . . . ?’ I start to ask, but then I’m not really sure what the question should be.
Is it not okay to go out and not come back?
‘You can stay out,’ Louise says.
‘But it should be pre-agreed. Or she should have let someone know. You can’t just disappear.
Liam left with some woman, but he told Nico and he came back. ’
I didn’t even notice Liam had left.
Louise stands. ‘We’ve got a full day today, so god knows what condition she’ll be in when she does get back.
Come and see me when you’ve finished your coffee, yeah?
We need to get to work. ’
The guests are arriving in two days – we have a meeting with the captain later to learn about them – so I spend the morning cleaning.
I iron bedding and vacuum not just the carpets, but the furniture and walls, even the ceilings.
There’s a list on the wall of everything that needs to be done before they arrive, from deep cleaning the seating, polishing cutlery, checking all the stock, and descaling the irons and coffee machines.
It’s a lot and I don’t know how to do most of it, but there’s pages of instructions in ring binders and if all else fails, there’s the internet.
I google the coffee machine and after trying variations on ‘nozzle leaking’, ‘pod bursting’ and ‘coffee machine messy’, I find a YouTube tutorial on how to take the machine apart.
The nozzle is completely jammed with impacted coffee powder and it takes me half an hour – along with much soaking, rinsing and jabbing with a wooden skewer – to get water running through it again.
Once I’ve cleaned the rest of the machine and put it back together, I make a coffee to test it.
It works perfectly and I actually feel really proud of myself.
It’s not time for my break yet, though, so I take the coffee through to the galley and offer it to Carlo the chef.
He looks appalled.
‘From the machine? Thank you, no. Is not coffee.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t even think. ’
‘I only drink espresso.’ He holds his hand up to mime a tiny cup.
I’m about to pour the latte away when Louise comes in, so I offer it to her.
She almost snatches it off me, wrapping both hands around the cup.
‘Thank you. I was just about to go and make one.’
‘I cleaned the machine, so I just made it to test.’
She pulls a face.
‘I should’ve told you not to bother.
I think we need to buy a new one.
That one leaks and sprays coffee everywhere. ’
‘That’s why I cleaned it.
The nozzle was blocked.
I watched a YouTube video. ’
Her eyes widen over the top of the mug.
‘Seriously? Well done. This tastes so much better too. I think we were losing half the coffee and getting mostly hot milk.’
‘Is not coffee!’ Carlo says again, passionately.
By lunchtime, I’m aching, my fingertips sore from scrubbing the stairs down to the galley, along with ‘detailing’, which means I have to clear every crevice and crack with another wooden skewer, but it feels good to work hard, to feel a sense of accomplishment.
Louise and I stop for omelettes cooked by Carlo, who is smiley and friendly but busy sorting the provisions for the forthcoming charter.
Adam joins us, sitting next to me and hooking his foot around my ankle under the table while Louise asks him about home, his family, how he’s finding deck work so far.
After lunch, I polish mirrors and scrub sinks.
I clean toilets, thinking about how Mum had said, ‘It won’t all be glamorous, you know. ’
Louise keeps trying to get hold of Kelsey, but there’s no reply and when the captain comes to find us, she’s furious.
‘How long before we call the police?’ Louise asks.
Captain Liz shrugs. ‘I honestly have no idea. What would they even do at this point? She’s been missing for – what? ’
She looks at her watch.
‘Less than twelve hours? I told her this mustn’t happen!
I can’t believe she’s done it again. ’
I look at Louise whose lips are set in a straight line, her face wan.
My stomach churns at the thought that something might have happened to Kelsey.
I wonder how well she knows the guy in the bar.
‘Still nothing?’ Nico calls, appearing from the salon.
‘Want me to go and have a look around?’
‘Where would you even look?’ the captain says.
‘She’ll have gone home with someone and she’ll turn up late and hungover, looking like shit, all embarrassed and apologetic .
. .’ She shakes her head.
‘I’m not putting up with it.
I told her.’ She checks her phone.
‘When she turns up,’ she tells Louise, ‘send her straight to me.’
‘And if she doesn’t? ’
Louise asks.
The captain sighs, rubbing a hand over her face.
‘If she’s not here by three, we call the police.
In the meantime, can you get everyone together in the mess?
I’ve got the preference sheets. ’
‘ Xander Barrett ,’ Captain Liz reads, once we’re all seated around the table in the crew mess.
Adam sits opposite and we smile at each other.
‘He developed an app for fine art auctions,’ the captain continues, ‘and he’s bringing a couple of friends to celebrate his fortieth birthday. ’
She slides information sheets across the table to each of us.
Xander Barrett is American; white with cropped curly hair, a square jaw and a wide smile.
In his photo he’s wearing a blue polka-dot shirt, sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms.
‘They mostly want to hang out and chill,’ the captain says, ‘but would like a special birthday dinner with a George Michael tribute act who’s being flown in from London especially and he’ll be staying in a hotel, not on board. ’
‘So maybe a beach picnic, jet skis . . .’ Louise suggests.
‘One pescatarian,’ the captain tells Carlo.
‘They would like kombucha in the morning, good coffee . . . The primary’s requested ice-cream cake for his birthday .
. . They like seafood, cocktails .
. .’
Carlo’s head snaps up from where he’s been looking over the information sheets.
He looks confused.
‘Seafood cocktails? Cocktail di gamberetti?’
The captain laughs.
‘No, no. Seafood. And cocktails.’
Carlo nods.
‘ Tutto bene .’
‘Although,’ Captain Liz says, ‘I once had a cocktail in Paris that was served in a shell. That might be nice.’
‘I could do this,’ Carlo says, making a note on his pad.
I turn to the second page where Xander Barrett’s friends are listed.
His former business partner, Jeff Hicks – who, in his photo, is wearing those gold-rimmed serial killer glasses and has a black and white beard like a badger – runs a company ‘building omni-channel consumer products to launch or grow commerce verticals’.
Whatever that means.
‘Hipsters,’ Nico says, tapping one of the other pages.
I flip through until I find the guy he’s looking at – hair shaved at the sides with curls piled on top, wire-framed glasses and gold hoops curved along the edge of one ear.
‘Aren’t they too old to be hipsters? ’
Captain Liz asks. ‘Or am I too old to know what a hipster is?’
‘They probably call themselves mavericks or some bullshit,’ Nico says, shrugging.
‘I like that film,’ Liam offers, still frowning down at the information sheet.
‘What film?’ Adam asks, as we all flick through the pages.
‘ Top Gun 2 ,’ Liam says.
Everyone laughs and Liam asks, ‘Is that not what you’re talking about? ’
‘It’s not, mate,’ Nico says, kindly.
‘Don’t worry about it. ’
‘There’s a boy called Maverick at my little sister’s school,’ I tell them.
‘Yikes,’ Louise says.
And then, tapping the info sheet, adds, ‘I bet at least one of these guys has a podcast.’
‘I would not take that bet,’ the captain says, smiling.
Kelsey arrives at two thirty, carrying her heels from last night and looking exhausted, hungover and basically a total mess, eye make-up caked under her eyes and hair a matted tangle.
Louise walks down the ramp to meet her and takes her directly to see the captain.
Adam’s polishing the chrome railing while I’m cleaning and refilling the bar fridge on the deck and he catches my eye, pulling a face.
I grimace back at him, but I don’t think she’s going to get fired.
She’ll probably just get a bollocking and a warning, surely.
But I’m wrong. The next time I see Kelsey, she’s showered and changed, but also pulling her rolling suitcase.
She smiles wanly at me.
‘I got fired.’
‘I’m sorry. ’
‘It’s fair enough really.
Although I’ve never been fired this early in a job before. ’
‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘I met a guy last night who’s heading to the Bahamas and said I can tag along, so I’ll probably do that. ’
She takes her phone out of the pocket of her shorts, checks the screen briefly and puts it back.
‘Wow! Okay. Is that, er, safe?’
‘Oh yeah. I mean, probably. There’s a full crew.
It’s not just me and him. ’
‘Right. That sounds . . . good then.’
She laughs, apparently entirely unconcerned.
‘And if that doesn’t work out, I can find someone else.
Don’t worry about me. ’