is what she wrote directly below her drawing of the ship. Martin couldn’t make any sense of it.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,’ he said.

He looked at his name, the drawing of the liner and the apparent sum.

Fourteen?

As the cabin numbers on the Sultan had four digits, this could only be a clue to a deck, if at all. Deck 14 was the pool with the waterslide, ice bar, driving range and jogging circuit.

‘What do you mean eleven plus three?’ he asked.

Her expression darkened. She seemed to be angry, as if his questioning was slowly getting on her nerves. Nonetheless she wrote again with the stylus:

My mama

‘Your mama?’ Martin asked, as if transfixed. ‘Do you know if she’s still alive?’

Anouk nodded sadly. A tear ran from her eye.

Martin could scarcely believe he’d obtained so much information from the girl in such a short time, even if he wasn’t able to pin most of it down.

‘I think we’d better have a little break,’ he said. Anouk looked exhausted. ‘Is there anything I can bring you?’ he asked.

The girl picked up the stylus one last time and wrote

Elena

beneath the drawing of the ship. Then she shoved her thumb back in her mouth and turned away from Martin, as if she wanted to make it absolutely clear that she had no more to tell him.

‘I’ll go and see if I can find her,’ Martin said, and was just about to go looking for the ship’s doctor when the alarm sounded again.

28

Naomi

‘I killed my best friend,’ Naomi Lamar had typed into the computer on the floor of her well-like prison.

Mel and I were ten years old and both of us were grounded because we’d been caught playing in the disused gravel pit yet again. We’d been forbidden to go there, you see. It was a weekday afternoon, our parents were at work and we both sneaked out even though we were grounded. We met – of course – at the gravel pit. It happened just before we had to leave to ensure we got back home before our parents. Mel wanted to slide down the northern slope on her plastic bag one last time. She was buried by a sand avalanche and disappeared. I screamed, called for help and dug with my bare hands, but couldn’t find her. She’d literally been swallowed up by the earth. I slunk home and didn’t dare tell my parents. Mel was found two days later and everyone assumed she’d slipped out of the house alone. I still think today that she died because of me and could have been saved if I’d raised the alarm. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.