Afterwards, I rested my head on his broad chest and gazed at the low ceiling that had been the sky of our world for the past week, and said, impetuously, ‘If I just seized the day and left my husband, if I threw caution to the wind, would you come with me?’

‘Yes’, he said, simply.

I lent up on one elbow, surprised, delighted and terrified in equal measure. ‘What? Are you sure? I haven’t given you much time to think about it. This is the emotional equivalent of a knee-trembler in an alley after the pub’s shut, I’ve just skipped all the foreplay.’

‘One thing treading on that damn mine taught me is to live in the moment. Nobody’s guaranteed a second act.’

My eyes searched his face. Did this really mean as much to him as it did to me? ‘I feel that – oh, god, it sounds so corny. Cliché alert! But I feel nobody ever really knew me before I met you.’

Brody put his hands around my waist, pulling me so close I could feel the pulse of blood in him and the warmth of his breath. ‘I feel that way too. But what about your husband?’

I shrugged. ‘Harry was the only nice guy in my school. He gave me a Nick Cave album, Kicking Against the Pricks, and on school disco night he fingered me behind the smoke machine. Needless to say, a few years later we got married and had two children. And I thought we were happy. But clearly I was lying to myself. I should have listened to the little voice inside me saying “Is this all there is?” Obviously, I’ve been a bit depressed since my babies were born.’

‘Really? Crikey. How old are they?’

‘Eighteen and twenty-one.’

Brody laughed, but then added, seriously, ‘Good point, though. What about your kids?’

‘Zoe’s just finished school and is taking a gap year. She’s fruit-picking near Byron Bay now and going travelling in Asia in the new year. And Jake’s trying to find a place to move out with mates from his apprenticeship course.’

‘If captains can perform weddings at sea, I don’t see any reason they can’t perform divorces as well,’ Brody suggested.

‘That’s a bit drastic,’ I said, laughing. ‘I’ve only known you for three weeks. I’m not sure I’m ready for the full husband-ectomy.’

‘Fair enough. But I do think we need to find out what this is, between us,’ Brody said solemnly. ‘Don’t you?’

‘But what about your contract with the cruise company?’

‘I’ll just break it and jump ship. I’ll say I got a twenty-four-hour virus – a twenty-four-hour virus that will last for at least the rest of the summer.’

‘No severance pay?’