‘Yeah, well, during high school I believed my true calling would be representing Australia in tennis at the Olympics, and, if that didn’t pan out, I could always fall back on winning the Nobel Prize for curing cancer. Now look at me. Sitting on my arse, pensively considering my future. I’ve had to abandon many of my former career ideas – lead guitarist, astronaut, trapeze artist – though I still have high hopes for one-legged pole-vaulting and sit-down comedy.’

I laughed, but added more sombrely, ‘I can’t believe that I’m fifty. Fifty! The years have stolen by so surreptitiously, it’s as if my life’s been dressed in combat fatigues.’

‘I know exactly what you mean . . . But maybe this trip has been the catalyst you needed? This could be the turning point in your life. Your epiphany. Or, at least, a catharsis.’

‘I assume they’re medical terms for orgasmic bliss?’ I teased, running my fingertips lightly up his thigh.

Brody, aroused but also annoyingly ticklish, snorted with laughter; a snort that made me cackle so loudly it set Brody off again until we were both bent double, like kids. Our laughter was a tap we couldn’t turn off. In his small cabin, hidden under the waterline like a submerged cave, we seemed to move outside of reality, in a timeless universe of our own discovery.

As the ship got closer to Sydney, we embraced so that neither might see the other’s face, and made love with a new and intense passion of impending loss. Two days out of Sydney, the dreamy underwater mood of the cabin seemed more fragile than ever as we spun our cocoon of breath around each other.

I continued to meet my sisters for meals and cocktails each day. They took my new blissful state as evidence that the cruise was doing me good. It was clearly doing them good. Amber had taken to slobbing around the cabin in her PJs, watching rom-coms, only emerging occasionally to eat her way through the dessert menu. ‘I always believed that the only way to live a long life was to drink what you didn’t like, do what you didn’t want to and eat what you had to. Now I’ve realised that you don’t really live longer, it just feels that way,’ she said when I bumped into her in the gelato bar.

‘Oh yes, the heart specialist’s diet – if it tastes good, spit it out. I too refuse to live like that,’ I concurred, spooning salted caramel gelato into my mouth, ravenous after hours of sex with Brody.