Tony realized that the two tourists were watching him now, eyes bright and alive with amusement under the dripping fringe of their hoods, damp with sea spray. He muttered a silent apology for intruding on their intimacy and tugging open the door, moved back inside.

He cut across into the toilet to pass a few moments before returning to the lounge, so as to ensure he would not be left alone at the table with Karen again. As he went inside, the ship rose suddenly on one side and then dropped again, having hit a swell, the jolt making itself felt in his bladder. The movement caused the doors of the cubicles to swing open. In one, Hugh Duggan sat on the toilet, the lid down, his leather bag on his clothed lap. He held a blister pack of tablets in his hands and was pressing out a tablet into his mouth.

For a fleeting moment, Tony saw Martin Kelly, coming out of the toilet in Liverpool Betty’s, his stash in his bag, while Shauna Laird gathered herself off the floor.

Duggan held his stare a second, then lifted another blister pack and repeated the process over again.

‘Sorry,’ Tony muttered, aware as he said it that he’d done nothing wrong.

Duggan did not acknowledge his comment, merely saying, ‘I have to take them before I eat.’

Chapter Eleven

‘I have to take it before I eat,’ the young girl said. She was a Year 8 student, eleven or twelve, he guessed, though only because of the year badge she wore on her uniform; looking at her, he would not have put her even at that age. She was slim, slight, with dirty fair hair pulled back from her face in a harsh ponytail. Her blouse looked a size too big for her, the collar encircling her neck too loosely. The sleeves of her blazer hung past her hands, her fingers curled around their edges in an almost defensive grip.

Tony had walked into his classroom to find the girl standing, her shirt pulled out from the waistband of her skirt, part of her stomach exposed as she injected herself. He’d excused himself instantly and waited outside until she’d tucked herself in and come to the door, knocking to let him know she was finished.

‘I had to take my insulin,’ she explained. ‘Before lunch. But the toilet is locked and I couldn’t find anywhere else to do it. Your room was free and it only takes a second.’

Tony nodded, trying to place her accent which melded together a Scottish lilt with something closer to home.

‘I have to take it before I eat,’ she said. ‘Or I get sick.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You might be best to go to the school nurse the next time, though. You don’t want anyone else walking in on you.’

The girl smiled, her features brightening. ‘You’re from home, sir,’ she said, her accent more discernibly Northern Irish now.

‘You’re Irish?’ Tony asked.