‘Captain, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’ve had a message from the bridge asking you to radio them immediately.’ She leans in closer so that the nearby tables can’t hear. ‘They say someone’s gone overboard.’

3

Alice

New Year’s Day 2022, 03:00

The Caribbean

I probably wouldn’t have known that the ship had turned round and gone back the way it came, if I hadn’t been there when Leo got the original call, or if it hadn’t been for the general murmurs and gossip among the crew. It’s difficult to have much sense of direction when you’re on something this huge and can’t see land.

But as soon as the lifeboat crews were scrambled, word spread round the workers almost as quickly as norovirus, the dirtiest word on a cruise ship in many senses. And after that, it wasn’t long until some of the passengers started noticing that something was up too.

Even from up here on Deck 16, I can just about make out the lights of the boats which are searching the water beneath. Looking down at them makes me feel queasy. I’m new to being on board, not only compared to most of the crew but also compared to a lot of the passengers, many of whom are veteran cruisers who come year after year – often on the same boat and sometimes even following the same itinerary. While I don’t claim to be any kind of physicist, it is still beyond me that something this size can actually float. The sea scares me if I think about it too hard – it’s so immense. Vast. Powerful. You fall in, you get swallowed up.

Rick, a junior engineer, is gazing out over the water, watching the lights. He’s one of my favourite people that I’ve met since I joined – he’s dry, funny, and reminds me of a brilliant pastry chef I worked with in London. He has a reputation for being a bit of a letch, but I’m too old for him to bother with so I can overlook that. He’s not the brightest, admittedly, and neither is he the most popular of the crew, but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the underdog. It can be lonely out at sea, I find, especially as I haven’t been here that long. But I feel like he’s my friend, and we have a laugh together.

‘If you didn’t know they were looking for someone who’s either already dead or not even there, you could say the lights on the water were quite pretty,’ Rick observes.

I laugh. ‘That could be almost poetic, if it wasn’t so macabre,’ I say. He gives me a strange look.

‘Macabre?’ he asks.

‘Ghoulish. Spooky. Something like that.’

He nods unselfconsciously. ‘Right-o.’