“The one time I manage to stay awake is the one time you don’t want me around,” she said, glaring at me with hands on her broad hips. “I said to myself, ‘She’ll never be able to get out of that blinking cat suit without help so I’d better make sure I don’t nod off.’ So I sat up on me bunk until I heard the last waltz played. And then when I came in I saw you’d got the cat suit off very nicely by yourself. Or with a little help from the gentleman, maybe.” She gave me a knowing look as she came across the room and picked up the cat costume that was lying on the floor. “Who’d have thought he was on board with us? That’s a turnup for the books, ain’t it? Or did you know and weren’t saying nothing?”

“I didn’t know, Queenie, and you mustn’t mention it to anyone. Mr. O’Mara is on some kind of secret mission.”

“Cor blimey,” she said. “He don’t half lead an exciting life, don’t he?”

“Doesn’t he, Queenie,” I corrected.

“Well, he do, don’t he?”

I sighed. She was never going to learn.

“Shall I run your bath then?” she asked. “And what do you want to wear?”

“I think the navy blue linen trousers and a white blouse, please.”

She went across to the closet. “’Ere, I’m sorry about barging in on you last night when you were in the middle of a bit of the old how’s yer father.”

“Yes, I was sorry too,” I said.

“You should let me know in future when I’m not to bother you. Tie a ribbon on the door or something.”

“Queenie, I wasn’t exactly planning something like that.”

“Nobody ever is,” she said. “At least that’s what my old mum tells me. She said she’d been to the pictures with my dad and they took the long way home by the canal and next thing she knew she was expecting me and they had to get married in a hurry.”

“I’ll remember not to walk home via the canal,” I said.

The loudspeaker in my room suddenly crackled into life. “Attention, all passengers. There is to be a lifeboat drill for all passengers at ten o’clock ship’s time. That is ten o’clock at your lifeboat station for all passengers. You do not need to bring your life jacket. This is only a drill. Repeat, this is only a drill.”

“I wonder what that’s all about,” Queenie said. “We already had one lifeboat drill when we came on board. We can’t have hit an iceberg, can we?”

I looked out of my window and saw people out on deck in short sleeves. “I think it’s highly unlikely,” I said.