Sipping nightcaps on the top deck beneath a canopy of stars seemed the perfect moment to fess up, but I took another dose of pathetic pills and gave in to cowardice by convincing myself that it was best to just have one night of harmony before my guilty admission and the avalanche of fury that would follow.

But the next day was so blissfully happy . . . and then the next . . . By the afternoon of day three, the truth still hadn’t found its way onto my lips – perhaps because my lips were far better employed working their way through the colourful cocktail list of ‘Slippery Nipples’, ‘Orgasms’, ‘Corpse’s Revenge’, ‘Sex on the Beach’ and big full glasses of a lethal beverage called, appropriately, ‘The Bull Shooter’.

Besides, I had other things on my mind, notably the number of handsome young men on board. Ship life was like being afloat in a huge aquarium. Every imaginable species drifted by – tall women as pencil-thin as trumpet fish; big, bloated wrasse with lugubrious lips; contented, kimono-ed whales who seemed to eat as though they had seven rectums; little darting types in coordinated sporty clothing who tended to swim in schools – all filtering luxury through their gills like oxygen. The men aboard, on the other hand, seemed to be of one breed only: muscled, chiselled and bronzed.

We Ryan girls were lying on our sun loungers, poolside, on the afternoon of our third day at sea, with me positioned between my two older siblings, the ham in the sisterly sandwich as usual. I was enjoying the view – that is, the passing pulchritudinous male parade – when a forty-ish man with cultivated perma-stubble bounded on deck and boomed a boisterous, American-accented ‘Hello, Laaadeeez,’ into his microphone. ‘I am Brent, and I’ll be your entertainment officer for the duration of the cruise!’

It takes a lot of personality and a lot of chutzpah to be an entertainment officer, and let’s just say that this bloke was over-qualified. To disguise the fact that he was losing his hair, Brent had shaved his head, giving the overall impression of a billiard ball with a sneer. ‘I need three of you bewdiful ladies to volunteer for a very special assignment . . . judging the “Neptune, Sea King of the Cruise” competition! And, of course, I need some extremely sexy male competitors. The only rule, dudes, is that contestants must check out of the judges’ cabins by nine am tomorrow, okay?’

The pool area was suddenly overpopulated with generously-buttocked mining heiresses in spiky heels, waving money to help influence the judge-selection process. Spray-tanned, bling-embellished, floral-bikini- or leopard-print-sarong-wearing and highly G-strung middle-aged women from all over the sundeck whooped and hollered as they gravitated poolwards, giggling.