I force my face into a more sympathetic expression and see him soften. ‘That’s OK. You were just worrying about me, I know that. It’s not the end of the world, it can be sorted. But try to think before you act, next time.’ I pause. ‘What’s done is done. I know it’s not nice, but you need to do what I say. Then before anyone notices Stuart’s missing, you can start spreading a rumour that he’d said he’d had enough of being stuck on ship and was going to go for a swim, forbidden or not. Tell Mara – that way it’ll be sure to get around quickly.’

He nods. ‘OK.’ There is a pause. ‘But what if he’s not dead?’

I sigh. Fuck’s sake. Do I really have to spoon-feed him everything?

‘Then you’ll simply have to hit him again until he is.’

63

Antonio

5 February 2022, 13:00

The Caribbean

I pull on latex gloves, grab a trolley from the storeroom and head back to the medical centre. My legs are wobbly and my stomach is churning.

I’ve never seen Lola so cold and it scared me. But she is right, I have messed up badly. It was stupid to hit Stuart. All he said was that the hair found was from a relative of mine – it didn’t mean it was Lola! It could have been from some half-brother I never knew I had or something – you hear stories like that all the time. I did the wrong thing, and I owe it to Lola to sort this out. I am not going to let her down again.

On the long walk down the corridor I pray that Stuart is already dead. I don’t want to have to hit him again. Then I feel tears rising because I have either become someone who is wishing an innocent man dead, or someone who is planning to commit a murder. Either is awful, and makes me not the kind of person I’d ever have thought I’d be. A killer.

For a second, I wonder if I am looking at this the wrong way. Is my loyalty in the wrong place? Am I going to kill someone just because Lola told me to? Is it really OK to take someone’s life to protect her? Should I ’fess up, tell Leo that Lola’s alive, tell him what she did and that I killed Stuart because of her? In the long run, would that be better? For both of us? Have we got any chance at all of getting away with what we’re doing? What we’ve done?