He took a sip of the drink, the first time he’d tasted it since that last night with Karen and, with that, felt, once more, her mouth on his, the ache, the longing for the touch of her skin, the heat of her.

A sudden tiredness washed through him.

He yawned, felt again the pain in his neck that accompanied the deep inhalation, considered that he should see the doctor when he got home. Perhaps it was a muscle pain, he decided, sitting up, craning his neck from side to side to relieve the ache.

The table next to him was empty, but the one beyond that seated a family of a mother, father and two children. They’d brought sandwiches and bottles of juice with them, which they now shared in a late supper. The younger child, a girl, was obviously tired and lay across the seat, her head resting on her father’s lap, the man sitting with his back to Tony. Opposite them, her face obscured by her partner, sat the mother. Next to her, a son, older than his sister, was begging to be taken to the shop, unhappy with the food on the table in front of him.

Tony thought of his own mother, then. They’d gone to Scotland several times when he was young, to visit his relatives. They’d taken the ferry together; Danny would sit with his mother, he beside his father, as they’d play cards, eating their packed lunch of ham and tomato sandwiches, the bread made soggy and stained pink from the tomato. The flask of tea always had a distinctive flavour and he could taste it now, stronger almost than the taste of the drink he’d just been sipping.

Of a sudden, as they reached deeper waters, Tony felt the surge of the ship moving forward and, with it, a commensurate feeling, as if he were floating, as if he had been freed, himself, from the shallow waters through which he had been navigating.

The pain in his chest bloomed once more, sharp and sudden, and then was gone.

Beyond him, the mother finally gave in and stood, taking her son’s hand to bring him to the shop. Tony studied her features and, in that moment, imagined that he recognized her. She was slim, slight, her dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Despite the demands of her child, she smiled at her husband as he spoke, asking her to bring him something nice.

Tony felt his eyes droop, leaden, felt a tiredness born of the day’s exertions lie heavily on him. He rested his head against the window as he watched the girl come closer, her son’s hand in hers, both their faces alight with some joke they shared.

She was happy. And with that, he believed he knew her now.

‘Alice?’ he whispered.

As she drew level with him, she glanced at him, quizzically.