Julia’s brain switched to a primaeval instinctive mode. She was a mother. Her harassed daughter had written a farewell letter. Stolen her key card for the cabin. Locked herself in. Failed to respond to her knocking. And was lying motionless on the ground.

She didn’t need to ignore the thought that Daniel would be there any second now, as it didn’t even cross her mind. One hand on the screen, the other on the railing. One foot on the bottom rung. The other on the second…

She climbed automatically.

She didn’t realise she was risking her life until she was standing on the balcony rail and, with both hands firmly gripping the edge of the partition screen, tried to lift a foot so as to put it down on Lisa’s side. And… slipped.

Her bare foot was still numb from having knocked into the lounger. She didn’t feel any pain, but nor did she feel that her wet sole had lost its grip.

Suddenly the entire weight of her body pulled on her arms. She didn’t have a chance. The screen needed a joint, a grip or something else to hang onto. But now hands followed feet and slipped too.

And her body fell.

Julia screamed, but the water below her roared back more loudly. The predator sensed blood when it saw Julia hanging onto the railing, right between the cabins.

In falling she’d managed to hold onto the highest rail. But it was wooden, too wide for her slim hands, and too wet to hold on for long. And Julia was too exhausted, too weak and too heavy.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down! she commanded herself, as if that could change anything. As if she could make the sea disappear simply by closing her eyes.

The wind wrested her like a flag. Julia closed her eyes and felt her fingers slowly slide from the round rail.

I’m sorry.

Were those the final words? Her daughter’s final words in this life?

One last time she screamed the name of her daughter and heard her own as an echo.

‘Julia?’

Someone was calling from a distance, but it wasn’t her daughter. Lisa’s voice wasn’t so deep. And her grip not so firm.

‘I’ve got you!’ cried the man, whose face suddenly hovered above hers. And pulled her back up at the last moment, back onto the ship.

Back into the nightmare.

38

Tiago was lying on his bed, sweating. In his new cabin the air conditioning wasn’t working, in itself a good reason why number 4337 was empty. The fact that water dripped from the shower with the velocity of honey and that the bedroom stank of cat’s pee definitively made the cabin uninhabitable.