Hold on, is that a possibility? It’s not so long ago that… oh, yes, now I remember!

At the moment when the pain wrenched her back to reality from her momentary doze, Naomi remembered.

It wasn’t a book.

It was her life.

Somewhere on the Sultan of the Seas.

And much to her displeasure it was long from over.

4

With a duffle bag over his shoulder, Martin Schwartz climbed the steps of the Sultan of the Seas amidships, and felt terrible.

He hated this ship, the subtle pastel-coloured panelling, the mahogany and teak furniture, and the soft carpets you walked along as if in a meadow. He hated the ridiculous staff uniforms, worn even by the lowliest porters, as if they were in the navy rather than at a funfair of mass tourism. He hated the discreet vanilla aroma mixed into the air conditioning system; hated the euphoria in the eyes of the passengers he’d boarded with. Women, men, children, families. Looking forward to seven nights of luxury, twenty-four-hour, all-inclusive buffets, restorative days on deck or in the two-thousand-square-metre spa with its ‘above-ocean’ fitness centre. They were planning to see the shows in the most modern musical theatre on the seven seas and enjoy cocktails in one of the eleven bars dotted around the seventeen decks. They were going to drop their children off at Pirate Club, clamber up the longest water slide ever built on a liner, fritter away their money in the casino or spend it in the shopping mall, which had been designed in the style of an Italian piazza. Maybe they boarded the ship with the same mixed feelings as when getting on a plane, a respectful concern as to whether the technology they were surrendering themselves to would get them unharmed from A to B. Martin was certain, however, that none of the almost three thousand passengers would have given the slightest thought to the fact that they’d be spending the next few days living in a small city, in which thousands of people belonging to the most diverse cultures and classes would collide, starting with the two-dollar-per-hour workers down in the laundry to the millionaires on the wind-protected loungers on the upper deck. A city where everything existed, apart from law enforcers. Where if you dialled 110 you got room service rather than the police. A city where the moment you stepped aboard you submitted to the legal system of some backwards banana republic, under whose flag the ship had been launched.

Martin hated the Sultan, its passengers and the crew.

But most of all he hated himself.

He’d sworn he’d never set foot on a cruise ship again. Especially not on this one. Yet a single call from a pensioner he didn’t even know had made him toss all his resolutions overboard.

How true!

As he laughed cynically to himself, an elderly, overweight couple coming towards him on the steps gave him a suspicious look.

Toss overboard.