They sat down and sunned themselves on a varnished wooden bench, and before long they had nodded off in the warm and soporific wind.

‘Nell! Penny! Wake up!’ They were roused from their slumber to find Dora, barefoot and anxious and wearing just her slip, standing in front of them. ‘It’s Moira! She’s been really sick and I don’t know what to do!’

Nell, with all her years of dealing with demanding patients at the surgery, snapped into action mode. ‘Let me have a look. What’s the cabin number?’

They followed the panicking figure to find Moira leaning out from her bunk, white as whey, noisily puking into a plastic duty free bag from Athens airport. She was so desperate that she hadn’t noticed it contained Dora’s new perfume.

Nell sat on the end of the bed. ‘Has she had diarrhoea as well?’

Dora nodded, unwilling to go and look at the devastation in the toilet.

‘I can see you make a natural nurse,’ Nell commented wryly. ‘Anyone got a thermometer?’ Nobody had. She laid a hand on Moira’s damp and sweaty forehead. ‘Yes, she’s got a temperature all right.’

‘I bet it was that octopus we ate at the harbour last night. Do you remember, we couldn’t resist because the fisherman said it was caught that afternoon?’ Penny blurted. ‘Moira liked it so much she ate mine as well.’

From the bunk, Moira groaned at the memory.

‘I’d better go and look for someone in authority.’ Nell jumped up. ‘Give her bottled water, and if anyone’s got Dioralyte, give her that too to rehydrate her.’ She disappeared towards the stairs, leaving Dora and Penny in charge of the patient.

Nell seemed to be gone an inordinately long time. Moira continued to puke while Dora looked on, horrified. Penny tried to hold back their friend’s tangled mass of hair.

‘It looked like a bird’s nest before, so God knows what it’s like now,’ Dora commented unsympathetically.

‘Shut up, Dora,’ Penny surprised herself by replying, ‘and go and look for some bottled water.’

Grateful to leave the war scene of their cabin, Dora pulled on some jeans, tucked her slip in as if it were a camisole and scuttled off. Just as she got to the staircase, the ferry juddered to a halt.

Nell reappeared, accompanied by a white-clad official with epaulettes on his shoulders. ‘This is the purser. They’re sending a small boat from the island we were passing and they want us to get off. They’ve phoned a doctor, who’ll be waiting for us on the quay.’

‘What, all of us?’ Dora asked, horrified.

‘Come on, Dora,’ Nell replied. ‘You wouldn’t like it if we abandoned you with food poisoning in some godforsaken place, would you?’

‘I wouldn’t have had second helpings of undercooked octopus,’ Dora stated.