‘Me too,’ said Irene, although now she was here she didn’t know why she had changed her mind and a large part of her was wishing she had said goodbye to them this morning, and driven away. She could be alone again and going home. Away from the kiss in the garden and the disquieting, unfocused tremor of excitement she felt when she remembered it. If she had left yesterday evening, then the past few days would already be turning into memories. Instead she was trapped on a boat in a small town just west of Montpellier with a group of people she hardly knew. They would all be living so close up against each other. The others were friends. They didn’t mind hearing each other use the lavatory, make love, bicker. They were entirely easy with each other. But she was a stranger whom they’d met for the first time three days ago – the half-sister of their friend’s new husband. Perhaps they were simply being kind to her, just feeling sorry for her – the lonely woman whose husband had fucked off and left her. If she were not here, they could wander around in their underwear, let hours of silence fill up the spaces of the days ahead.

And soon the engine would be started, the ropes untied, and the boat would be moving off, leaving her rusting car standing at the canal side for the next four or five days, and there’d be no going back.

She went to her cabin and arranged her few clothes into the drawer, her toothbrush and toothpaste into the plastic beaker in the shower room. The boat rocked slightly in the wake of a passing vessel; aqueous light rippled and glimmered on the grubby white ceiling, thin plasticky boards tacked in place. Her cabin was really just a fragile cardboard compartment, no lock on the door. Irene sat on the bed, the blanket itchy under her bare legs. She didn’t want to go up on deck just yet. She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do up there – sit and chat with them, trying to recapture the easy intimacy of the time after the party? Read a book? Perhaps it would be a good idea to take one of the ancient yellow bikes stacked at the stern of the boat and cycle part of the way.

‘Oi!’ shouted a voice from outside. Mickey. ‘Let’s open a beer.’

‘It’s only eleven o’clock.’

‘We’re on holiday!’

‘Mummy!’ called Katherine from next door. ‘Mummy, I need a wee.’

‘OK, this is easy,’ came Luke’s voice. ‘Who wants to know how to operate the boat? We should get moving quite soon. It would be a good idea to get through the first set of locks today and they close at five.’

The engine coughed into life and Irene could feel its faint vibration underneath her.