As I fiddled with my phone to find the soft, wafting Ravel I craved, Brody did a little light tuning of his own. Forget Spotify – my nipples were soon so erect I could have picked up Classic FM. His mouth then moved slowly down my body, and stayed there for a long time. Clearly, if Brody ever gave up the medical profession, he could definitely win a medal for breaking the world underwater endurance record. And, I was pleased to note, there was nothing cheap about the doctor’s aftershave.

The next time I woke, the sunset had turned on its dimmer switch and the day was dying slowly, turning from gold to russet to an aubergine bruise. The sea shushed on the side of the boat – shh, shh, shh, as though conspiring in our secret.

I felt so contented and happy that even the palm fronds on the hills outside the window seemed to be waving in a friendly way. Hell, even the bend in the bananas in the bowl on the coffee table made it look as though they were smiling.

‘Wow,’ was all I could say. ‘Is it like this for you every time? I mean, is this . . . normal? It’s not normal for me. But maybe you make every woman feel like this?’ I blathered, intrigued and overwhelmed.

Brody raised his head and met my eyes. His eyes were wide and seemed to shine with delight. ‘No. It’s not normal at all.’

Then this is something, I thought. This is really something. I smiled too, a big, radiant beam, like a cartoon of a besotted teenybopper.

What was happening? This was supposed to be a transient, fleeting, you-make-me-feel-alive-again fling thing, not a proper romance. He kissed me once more, and I slipped into the moment like a warm bath.

Oh, fudge, I thought as I went under. Oh, fuckity, fuckity, fudge fuck.

21

‘Attention: woman overboard!’ That was the announcement I kept waiting to hear over the ship’s public address system, because I’d dived in the deep end, with no life jacket. It was as though my vag had its own private sat-nav system – a twat-nav, which kept leading me back to Brody against all my better judgement.

The following week was a nonstop sexual gymkhana. We had sex everywhere and anywhere – standing up, backwards, on the shuffleboard deck, on his surgery gurney, in my cabin, in his cabin, once in a lifeboat and twice in the morgue. ‘It’s too public. I couldn’t possibly . . . I couldn’t . . . I can’t . . . Okay, I can . . . Oh, right, I clearly am!’ became my catch cry.

Time ceased to exist between us. All I could think about was the spicy, delicious smell of Brody’s skin. And all he could think about, he said, was unwrapping me with all the breathless anticipation and excitement of a kid on his birthday.