My lips felt as though they’d been novocained. ‘W-w-what?’ I stammered. ‘No, I haven’t.’ Oh, god, I was lying to my sisters again. I’d become so adept at lying, I really only had two options: join Her Majesty’s Secret Service or become a conservative party politician. But I’d promised Brody – and I was clearly in enough trouble with the karma police as it was. I broke out into a sweat that had nothing to do with the tropical sun. I felt like an adolescent, all angst-riddled and blush-ridden. ‘Must be a snorkelling mask rash,’ I ad-libbed, rolling onto my stomach so I could bury my face in my towel.

‘I didn’t know you needed a snorkel to “go down”!’ Emerald jested.

‘I dunno what you’re talking about . . .’ Liar, liar, pants on fire! How many pairs of pants had I immolated on this cruise, I vaguely wondered.

‘Now that you’ve rolled over, I can read something imprinted onto your back. Hmm, what does it say? Life boat cover – remove only in emergencies.’

‘Really?’ I momentarily fell for Amber’s ruse and rolled onto my back again.

‘I was only joking, Ruby, but you’re blushing bright red. So, you have been making out with someone?’

‘No! It’s not stubble rash. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . an over-exuberant facial scrub.’ I was a bad sister. I should be made to wear a large badge identifying me as a ‘sister trainee’, I scolded myself.

A ruckus by the pool saved me from further interrogation by my nosy siblings. Not that I didn’t want to talk about Brody with them, despite his warnings; I just didn’t know what I wanted to say. Anyway, there was nothing to say, because I was ending it, before I fell flat on my face – well, fell flat on both of my visages, because I’d become so two-faced of late I was positively bi-facial.

‘Right, laaadeeez!’ boomed a familiar American-accented voice over the tannoy. I recognised the counterfeit buoyancy of Brent, the entertainment officer, and spied him at the edge of the pool. It seemed to me that nobody could speak that enthusiastically without Class A narcotics being involved. ‘It’s time for the SPLASH Competition. So, tell me, ladeez, do you like to get wet?’ he said lasciviously.

A few of the tipsier female passengers whooped accordingly.

‘Well, I’m about to make you very, very wet indeed. I’d like our heftiest males to report poolside, pronto. Points will be given for water displacement. If your belly flop wets the ladies on the upper balcony, double points. A little pathetic squirt that gets none of the ladies wet won’t get you any points. This is a competition where size does count, don’t you agree, laaadeeez?’

The cocktail-clutching women clustered around the pool squawked their inebriated agreement.