‘Right, Flabba. Your turn. I want pain. We’re looking for bruised nipples. I want you bright red from your Adam’s apple to your ankle, and all the dangly bits between, bro.’

Flabba reluctantly ascended the ladder to the top diving board then propelled himself forward. Midair, he suddenly jerked into a half-dive in an effort to soften his entry into the water.

‘Oh, shame, Flabba, shame. There’s a technical term for what you did. “The butt-pucker”. You chickened out, dude! Now, do it again, and this time I want a double tsunami with a twist.’

The reluctant, sodden contestant number two was about to climb back onto the diving board when an angry voice reverberated across the deck. Passengers swivelled in the direction of the commotion. My heart did a little tap dance when I realised it was Brody in his Listerine-green medical uniform.

‘Hey, bud, release these crew members immediately.’ Brody snatched up some towels lying on the end of a sun lounger and chucked them at the shanghaied, dripping men.

‘What? Why?’ the furious entertainment officer demanded, all charm evaporating from his voice.

‘It’s a breach of health and safety rules. If there’s an emergency, the crew’s on call. Imagine if some poor guest requires mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and wakes up to find herself in a lip-lock with a half-naked clownfish,’ Brody improvised, climbing up onto the lower dive board to address his adversary face to face. ‘She’ll be psychologically scarred for life. Besides, both these men have abdominal issues. I need them excused on medical grounds.’

The two half-drowned, dragooned crew members seized their moment. Boris and Flabba swiftly disappeared below decks.

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ The entertainment officer gnashed his cosmetic orthodontia, increasing his resemblance to a piranha. ‘You are such an a-hole, Quinn, you know that? Getting the crew involved is naval tradition.’

‘So is administering one hundred lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails, but we don’t do that anymore,’ the doctor retorted. ‘Mind you, you’d probably misinterpret that as foreplay.’

And then the medic gave a little bounce on the diving board. It wasn’t a big movement, but it was enough to propel the entertainment officer off his perch on the end of the board, arse-first into the pool. Brent’s ungainly, scrambling, sprawling fall, landing right next to the wall, created a wave of water big enough to knock two women right off the edge of the pool.

‘Oops!’ the doctor said.

Emerald and Amber cheered with delight and held up their hands, giving the doctor a perfect five.

I surreptitiously held up both hands – because Doctor Brody Quinn was a perfect ten.

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