Juliette popped her head out of the pool on the main deck, where I had set up a mini outdoor office. Her hair was slicked back and half her face was obscured by her giant sunglasses, but what I could see of it was smiling.

‘I’m waiting for Sarah to call,’ I said, holding up my work phone as evidence.

‘That phone’s waterproof,’ she replied as she pushed off the edge, slicing backwards through the water. ‘You could swim and wait at the same time.’

I turned it over in my hands looking for confirmation. ‘It is?’

‘Sarah switched all the work phones to waterproof ones after I “accidentally” drowned five of them,’ she called back. ‘Don’t make me swim on my own, Fran, get in the bloody pool.’

‘Never really been much of a swimmer,’ I demurred, pulling my black cardigan closely around me. Even though I was wearing my regulation black one-piece under my clothes, cannonballing into a pool with the boss didn’t feel particularly professional to me. And then there was the fact that no one other than Stew had seen me in any state of undress since they did away with the communal changing rooms in Primark, and even he usually turned the lights out first.

‘Hot tub then?’ Juliette swam towards the steps and rose up out of the water, tossing her hair around like something from a Herbal Essences advert, before thoroughly destroying the dream by reaching back to pull her bikini bottoms out of her bum.

‘Stew hates hot tubs,’ I said as I dutifully followed her across the deck. ‘We went to Center Parcs with his sister and her kids once and we were just getting relaxed when this bat came flying out of nowhere and scared him half to death. Haven’t been in a hot tub since.’

She eased herself into the water, stretching her arms out along the side and resting her head against the back of the sunken tub. ‘No bats here,’ she said, the steam rising up around her in the crisp November air. ‘And no reason why you shouldn’t get in.’

I looked at the phone and then back at the hot tub. It did look inviting. And the number of opportunities I would have to sit in hot tubs on yachts with pop stars in my life were probably limited.

‘Get in the sodding hot tub, Fran, it’s an order.’ Juliette tipped her head back, long hair fanning out all around her. ‘You’re stressing me out.’