There are more people than you might imagine on board, given that the ship isn’t currently in service – around a hundred. They’re a mixed crew. There’s Captain Leo, who I’m guessing is here because he spends his whole life at sea and has nowhere else to go. Some general maintenance staff who are involved in updates and generally tarting up the ship. Safety Officer Bill and his team who are overseeing the new CCTV going in. Engineer Danny and his assistant, my friend Rick. Doctor Stuart – we legally need a doctor on board, thankfully. Phwoar. Head of housekeeping Mara. Several cleaners who clean the ship daily even though there is next to no one here – starting at one end, picking up where they finished off the day before, and then doing the same again once they get to the other end, a little like the crew who paint the Golden Gate Bridge. The cleaners also keep the rooms that we are occupying in order; one great thing about being on board is, beyond doing your job, you barely have to lift a finger. I imagine it’s a bit like being at boarding school – not that I would know.

Plus, incongruously, dancer Antonio is here. Heracles doesn’t go so far as to provide us with entertainment while we’re on lay-up, obviously, but he’s decided to take a job as a cleaner to fill the time until the ship starts cruising again. While Lola’s disappearance shocked everyone, he has, unsurprisingly, taken it particularly badly.

I didn’t know her for that long, but I miss her. She was great fun and we had lots of laughs together. She was a good few years younger than me but somehow seemed both older and younger than her twenty-three years. She kept me filled in on all the gossip and confided in me about some (but not all, I’m sure) of her woes. I think she saw me as a bit of a mother figure; once when she was drunk she told me that she’d never known her own mum.

I’m new to cruising, but while some of the crew said they’d heard of a few cases of people going overboard anecdotally, no one I’ve spoken to has actually been on a ship where it happened. That said, almost everyone seems to have a friend or friend of a friend who had more direct experience of it, or at least claims they do.

But Antonio staying on Immanis seems creepy to me. It’s not as if Lola’s suddenly going to bob up out of the water, is it? Even though Heracles isn’t exactly renowned for its benevolent HR policies, I’m sure, given the circumstances, they’d have let him go without any issues. He’s only cleaning, after all – anyone could do it. It doesn’t need to be him.