‘Oh for God’s sake, stay if you want!’ Nell had no time for this diva-like behaviour. ‘Penny, can you get Moira’s things?’

Penny almost skidded across the puke-sodden floor of the cabin and gathered up all the stuff she could see.

‘Hey, that’s mine,’ protested Dora, when Penny picked up a Prada rucksack.

Penny threw it at her. ‘And good luck if you come down with salmonella in Sloane Street.’

The purser and one of his underlings carried Moira up the steps and across the deck to the lifeboat area. A small Greek caique was bobbing up and down beside the ferry like a duckling next to its mother. Moira was laid inside its small wheelhouse with Nell, Penny and the luggage following. It had almost started to pull away when a tall figure in a sick-smeared white top, looking more like Medea or one of the Maenads than a smart London PR, half threw herself into the boat. One of the ferry passengers chucked the Prada rucksack down after her, then handed her her suitcase rather more gently.

As they headed through the choppy, white-horse-crested waves towards the shore they could hear Dora throwing up over the side. ‘Oh my God,’ Nell half-laughed. ‘She’s being seasick. I hope the wind’s not blowing the wrong way.’

Eventually Dora sat down, looking pale and undignified. ‘So where the hell are we going?’

Nell asked the captain for the answer in halting Greek.

‘He says the island’s called Kyri. It has only five hundred inhabitants.’

‘Oh, brilliant. Nightlife central, then,’ Dora commented grudgingly. The others ignored her. ‘Isn’t Kyri the place Yorgos was talking about – where Takis went? A speck of land full of goats and relatives, to be avoided at all costs?’

‘We don’t have much choice, as you may have noticed,’ Nell pointed out crisply.

As the small boat buffeted its way towards the shore, they could make out a neat harbour with the usual jumble of bright white cubes climbing up the hillside towards a tiny blue-domed church. A row of cafes lined the quayside, one of them decorated with streamers of bunting. ‘For the saint’s day,’ the captain informed them, without elucidating which saint. Every island seemed to have its own special saint, quite often mummified, which they carried round on high days and holidays.

Nell kept stroking the groaning Moira. ‘Nearly there now. You’re a VIP. They’ve made a special stop for you. Look, there’s the doctor standing on the quay. And an old Greek lady swathed in black, just like the old days. She’s probably come to offer us rooms.’

‘And I can imagine what they’ll be like,’ muttered Dora.

‘Isn’t this what we wanted?’ Nell threw at her. ‘A genuinely unspoiled island just like Zanthos used to be?’

Dora had been about to reply ‘Not this unspoiled,’ but in a rare moment of tact, thought better of it.