‘Looks like you had an interesting time,’ he replied as he followed me down the steps from the deck and inside the ship. ‘Pretty sure that wasn’t what you were wearing when you left.’

‘When I was abandoned.’

I gave him such a glare, I was almost certain I heard his testicles pop back up inside him.

‘You probably want to go back to your cabin and um, freshen up,’ he muttered, hanging back until there was a safe distance of several feet between us. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Yes, you can fuck off.’ I jabbed the button to call the lift and it chimed softly, the doors sliding open right away. ‘Do you think you can manage that yourself, or do you need to ask the captain for permission?’

‘I’ll give it my best shot,’ he muttered as the doors slid shut on his pathetic face.

In the twenty seconds it took the lift to deliver me to my cabin, my Lenny-incurred wrath had melted away, leaving me a shadow of a shell of a human being, and when the doors pinged open, I was practically on my knees. All I wanted was a shower, a clean pair of my own pants, and bed. Whatever came after that, I would deal with it.

I was outside my cabin, one hand on the door handle and just moments away from the greatest wee of my life when I noticed the door to Juliette’s cabin was slightly ajar.

‘Not my problem,’ I said out loud. I wasn’t her assistant any more, after all.

But why was the door open?

‘This is officially the last of your nine lives,’ I muttered, and with an extremely heavy sigh, rapped on the woodwork, waited for a moment, then let myself into the cabin.

‘Hello?’ I called into the seemingly empty room. ‘Juliette?’

It was a mess. The covers had been kicked off the bed, there were clothes all over the floor, and empty bottles everywhere. The sliding doors to the terrace were wide open and the curtains blew into the room, slapping at me like a drunk girl being forced into an Uber. I was attempting to yank them shut, wrestling the heavy fabric into the rose-gold tie-backs, when I spotted two legs hanging over the edge of the terrace. Long, slender legs, the tips of their toes just barely making contact with the deck.

‘Juliette!’ I screamed, tossing my bag on the floor and bolting outside. ‘Juliette, no!’

I’d never moved so fast in my life. Diving across the deck, I grabbed her legs and hoisted her back onto the terrace, clutching her tightly as my chest heaved with panting breaths.

‘It’s not that bad,’ I wailed. ‘Nothing’s that bad.’