I’d actually factually shitted myself. Myself, I had but shat.

‘Tell me you’re kidding,’ I croaked, picking off a rogue crusty blood clod from my inner nostril.

‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ she said, pulling at a stray eyelash and flicking it to the floor. ‘It was one of the many fluids you covered yourself in over the course of last evening.’

‘Have you been here all night?’

‘Yes.’

I felt around the bed – no evidence of shit on my hand and yet I could still smell it on me. ‘I’ve never done that before. Ugh.’ My stomach lurched and my head banged. ‘Who cleaned me up?’

‘You managed to undress yourself and get into the shower and I monitored you. I asked your room steward to launder your clothes.’ She pointed to a clean pile of fresh laundry on the desk.

‘I don’t remember. You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘It was either that or incinerate them. I told him you had a milk intolerance and ate the wrong ice cream.’

My hair was slightly damp. There was a bunched-up sodden towel behind my head that I’d been using as a pillow. ‘You saw me naked?’

‘I didn’t have much choice. It was either that or leave you lying foetal on the carpet stinking of your own excrement.’

‘Did you… touch me?’

‘No. I did not.’

‘I don’t know why I asked that.’

‘Because I have intimated to you my preference for women,’ she sighed. ‘But trust me, anything naked covered in its own excrement does not excite. It bears as much allure as a farmyard animal.’

Shame slithered over me like snakes. ‘I’m going to have another shower.’

There came no argument from Caro. A shushing sound heralded the appearance of that day’s Cruise Letter and she got up, waddling over to the door to retrieve it. When I emerged from the bathroom, she was still there, sitting at the dressing table.

‘I’m clean,’ I mewed, standing beside my unmade bed like I was ready for a choirgirl audition. The room smelled slightly less shitty but a vague odour lingered like an embarrassing reminder.

‘Just in time to catch breakfast,’ said Caro, standing up.

‘I don’t want anything.’

‘You can sit and watch me eat mine then.’

We went up to the Diamond Deck breakfast room and I joined Caro at her usual table overlooking the garden. Still no signal on the iPhone, even though we had docked. A waiter came over to take our order.

‘Two freshly squeezed orange juices and some ham and cheese croissants, I think this morning, please, Martin.’

‘I said I didn’t want anything,’ I reminded her.

‘They’re not for you,’ she replied with a definite bat of eyelid. Martin poured out coffee into respective cups, taking the order to the kitchen.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘For helping me last night. When I shat.’