Next stop Cadiz, then Gibraltar. After that came Cartagena, Valencia, Mallorca, Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa, Florence, Rome, Sardinia, Naples, Sicily and finally Malta where the ship would turn around and head back along the African coast via Tunisia. Back towards the UK.

I had about two weeks to find asylum or be in one.

And I don’t like uncertainty, I never have. I like plans, expectations, safety. I like being at home. I like gardens. Planting something and being there long enough to watch it grow. I like knowing what country is going to be outside my door every time I open it. But I was stuck there on that floating tin can for the foreseeable – aimless. Rootless. And no amount of checking that phone screen was going to hurry along a miracle.

Not that I could let the Prossers in on any of this. As far as they were concerned, I was Fair Dinkum and a fantastic new travelling companion who got a round in when expected, was brilliant with children and answered the easiest pub quiz questions about pop music and soap operas (even though I knew the Caravaggio one and the square root of sixty-four).

For the Cadiz stop-off, I stayed with them on the ship all day. I won the bingo twice and shared my congratulatory bottle of wine with my new family. I got in the ball pit with the kids and joined in with the balloon-twisting workshop and mini golf and ice-cream-eating competitions.

At dinner, helped along by said wine, I regaled them with tales of mine and Bruce’s wedding in Bora Bora (it had come up in the pub quiz) and duetted with Ken on ‘It Takes Two’ at karaoke. But by early evening, even though my face was pointed towards the Russian acrobats during ‘Putin on the Ritz’, all my thought owls had flown to the big question marks in my head:

Where was I going? Who was I now? How long could I keep this up?

I pretended to have a headache and excused myself. I went up to the deck and gazed out at the endless sea, listening to old school Simply Red pumping from speakers, watching couples in sandals, walking hand in hand. Men with belly overhang getting in a late swim with their leathery wives.

Mums. Dads. Sisters. Boyfriends. Families. A woman holding a baby against her shoulder. A dad holding a baby against his neck.

I missed Ivy. I missed her so much my womb would contract whenever I thought about her. And though I tried to push past it and be all No Dramas like Hilary, sometimes life sucks the fucking nice right out of you.

The Man Who Walks, for instance, ambled past and I attempted a Hilary ‘Hiya’ and he blanked me. And in a flash, I could see myself pushing him towards the hand rails and upending him overboard.