Gerlinde nodded, not in the least annoyed that he’d interrupted her. Pulling herself to her feet with the assistance of a wheelchair parked beside her bed, she yanked open the drawer of her bedside table.

‘Not just that, young man, not just that.’

She cast him a conspiratorial look, before adding, ‘I may even have proof that your family is still alive.’

As she uttered these words she tossed Martin a small, tatty teddy bear, which once upon a time had been white, but whose coat had now taken on the hue of dirty sand.

A hand opened in Martin’s stomach and a long finger tickled his oesophagus from within. He felt sick. He wouldn’t be getting off this ship again so quickly.

The old toy, reeking of sweat and oil, was missing an eye and its right paw, but the initials were still in the same place.

T.S.

Exactly where some years ago Nadja had sewn them with the machine, just before Timmy had gone on his first school trip to the field centre.

5

The same time, deck 5, cabin 5326

Loss. Grief. Fear.

Just as often as her path had been lined with trapdoors over the past few years, Julia Stiller had hoped that by now she was well trained in avoiding the dark entrances to the cellar that life held open for her. Or that next time she wouldn’t fall into them so deeply. Only so far that, with her own strength, she could haul herself up again from the edges of her psychological chute.

But far from it.

This time it was a telephone call that had scared her to death, proving that you could never prepare yourself for the guillotine of destiny. It had descended just at the moment when she finally felt happy again after a long, long time, here in the port of Southampton aboard the Sultan of the Seas.

It had now been three joyless years since her husband had been unfaithful, her group of friends had broken up, and her daughter had blamed her for the fact that they no longer lived in the villa in Köpenick, but in a two-room apartment in Hermesdorf. Small and cramped, but still so expensive that she had to work every night shift she could get as a nurse in the premature baby unit at the clinic, so as to make ends meet somehow.