Caro wasn’t back at her cabin yet and the upper deck was fairly quiet with most people having hit the dining rooms or catching a show. A message bing!ed through around two minutes later, straight to voicemail.

‘Hiya, love,’ came the Mancunian caterwaul. ‘Yeah, I found Dad’s file with the information in – I’m waiting to hear back that the fella’s expecting yer – he’s got a bad connection where he is. Bit remote. Give me a few days and I’ll let you know the address—’

‘What address?’ I shouted down the phone. ‘Where am I going? Aren’t you even going to tell me which fucking country?’

No, she didn’t. She warbled on and on about how hard it had been to find the envelope Bobby had hidden, how they still hadn’t released his body for cremation yet and how she’d never known such admin when a person dies.

‘Oh cry me a fucking river, I don’t care, just tell me WHERE, Dannielle?’ I cried. ‘WHERE AM I GOING?’

‘You’ve lucked out though – Dad’s done all right for yer. Place looks reet nice. So yeah I’ll call yer as soon as I’ve heard back and let you know when he’ll be expecting yer and all that, all right, love? You take care now.’

I called her back immediately but the ship was already fully at sea by then and all signal had been lost. I walked a lonely, uncertain circuit right around the top deck, chewing it over, trying to pick the bones out of what she’d had said. A ‘reet nice’ place but a ‘bit remote’. Where could it be? South America, like Bobby had said originally? Afghanistan? Australia?

I found the longer I walked, the less I wanted to leave. I wanted to stay on the ship, in the cabin, in my little bed. Sightseeing with Caro. Playing with Ty. This was the only home I had. The angry bubbles popped and fizzed in my stomach. Everything felt wrong – bowling shoes wrong. Point Break remake wrong. Bounty-in-the-God-Tier-of-Chocolate-wrong.

And you know what that means.

The only other person about on deck at that time was The Man Who Walks. He was leaning against the railings like I was, newspaper tucked under his arm. Wrong place, right time.

‘Hello,’ I said, leaning on the railings next to him.

‘Oh, good evening,’ he said, with a polite nod, and he attempted to step past me but I blocked him. He wore a lemon shirt with a glasses pocket, tucked into white trousers and his shoes were grey and neatly tied with bowed laces. Everything about him was clean and pressed and even. Including his face.

‘You were thinking about your wife, weren’t you?’

He frowned. ‘Sorry, do I know you?’

‘No. I heard you lost your wife, though. I lost someone too.’

‘Did you?’

‘A baby.’