The man was on the verge of replying that he was fine, when he realized he was about to be sick again and ran for the gents with a hand clamped over his mouth. As the door swung shut, he could hear the bartender’s soft chuckle and his comment to a colleague. “First-timer, that guy. You can spot them a mile off.”

As the ferry docks, most of the people on board begin to gather near the stairs to the car deck. The man hangs back—as a foot passenger he will be exiting the same way as Ruby and Leonie, but he doesn’t want to risk being seen at this crucial point. He keeps his eye on them. In Ruby’s arms, the child is almost asleep, her head on the woman’s shoulder. He lets them go in front, with another six or seven people between them. Leonie’s eyes are just closing when she spots him. He looks straight at her for a split second, then bends quickly pretending to tie a shoelace. Shit. He was so close. It couldn’t be spoiled, not when he’d come so far.

“Mamma Bee?” he hears Leonie say, talking around her thumb so that the words aren’t quite clear.

“Yeah, baby?” says Ruby.

“Daddy there.”

He holds his breath. It isn’t a question, but Ruby answers it as if it is. “No, honey, Daddy’s not here.”

When he peeks above the heads of the other people, he sees that Ruby has whirled around and is searching the crowd, standing on tiptoes, scrutinizing every face. He ducks in the nick of time.

“I seen him,” says Leonie. “Daddy there.”

Perhaps aware of listening ears, or wary of frightening the girl, Ruby merely says shhh, and Leonie stops talking. Hemmed in by the crowd, Ruby faces the front and rocks the child gently, though he can tell from the way she holds her shoulders that she’s tense. The man moves so that he isn’t directly in Leonie’s eyeline before he glances again and sees that she is asleep.

The door clanks open, and he stands aside to allow everyone to get off before him so that he can put as much distance between him and Ruby as possible. Gingerly he pulls down the baseball cap that covers his wound, and wraps the fisherman’s jacket tightly around himself as he disembarks. By the time he walks slowly up the freezing dock, the two of them have gone into the nearby hotel; he can just see them through the window as Ruby speaks with the receptionist. It’s too late, too dark to try to find Constance now. They’ll be planning a daytime rendezvous, and he needs to be ready in the morning, the moment they set off.