Fizz is the most exclusive bar on the ship. As its name suggests, drinks-wise, it only serves champagne. Everything from the brands you might buy on impulse in the local supermarket to celebrate a special occasion right through to vintage bottles which sell for five figures, or sometimes even more. These bottles are kept in a backlit cabinet behind the bar and when someone buys one, which is more often than you might imagine, there’s an elaborate ritual of two bar staff having to use two different keys to open the cabinet. There’s a table on a mezzanine with a red rope around it where the purchaser and their guests can go and drink their champagne from Dartington crystal glasses in full view of everyone. Sometimes people choose to purchase a bottle for a marriage proposal or a significant birthday, but quite often it’s just because they can.

Tonight it’s New Year’s Eve and things are a bit different in Fizz. The guests (mainly Heracles suite regulars) have paid a supplement of several hundred pounds to be here. A team of white-gloved waiters are stacking champagne coupes into a pyramid shape. Once the pyramid is built, two take a Nebuchadnezzar – a bottle equivalent to twenty normal champagne bottles – and pour it into the top glass. As it trickles down, the 120 guests take their glasses, and the whole thing starts again.

Fizz has one of the best views on the ship, with one wall entirely made of toughened glass. The pyramids of coupes are being built one after the other by the transparent wall, with a backdrop of a clear sky and many stars. A couple of stacks are always ready at any one time as the clients mustn’t be left with an empty glass. There is a delicate gold rope draped in front of them to avoid anyone getting too close and accidentally knocking the pile over, especially as the evening wears on and the guests have enjoyed more and more glasses of bubbles.

Trays of freshly shucked oysters on crushed ice with individual pipettes of shallot vinegar and tiny blinis topped with caviar are brought out as the latest pyramid is completed. A cheer goes up as the two barmen theatrically pop the cork from the enormous bottle, carefully directing it away from the towers of glass.

A woman screams. The two barmen look up, eyes wide, alarmed that the cork may have inadvertently hit someone.

But the screaming woman is pointing at the glass wall as her other hand flies to her throat.

‘Someone fell!’ she shrieks. ‘I saw them!’

‘Me too!’ someone else shouts.

There is an uncomfortable murmur before a portly man with a vinegar stain on his starched white shirt yells: ‘Call the captain! We need to stop the ship!’

55

Lola

New Year’s Day 2022, 18:00

The Caribbean