Eventually she clicked off the screen. The home page was a news site, and as she sat there chewing the skin around her thumbnail, deep in thought about the mysterious Anna Masi, she idly scanned the articles. The Essex thing popped up, the old man who had died, the one where the carer had vanished with his money.

The photo was there again, in colour this time. The carer’s face was obscured as she glanced off to one side. The only thing that was really visible was her coat, black and tailored, and the pop of colour from the vivid pink beret that sat atop her head.

She doesn’t look like the hired help, thought Paula as she scrolled down the page. She looked expensive and fierce and confident. She looked like everything Paula herself tried to portray but was never sure she actually carried off.

She was about to click out of the page, already thinking about returning to her suite, having a cup of tea and breaking open the box of chocolates from the welcome hamper that she had so far managed to resist. The mouse was hovering over the cross in the top right corner when her finger stalled.

She leaned closer to the screen and scrutinised the photo of the woman, and suddenly her heart began to beat in double time.

Slamming doors and sudden footsteps startled her. There was a flurry of activity in the previously deserted lounge. Paula sank down in her chair as bodies came from seemingly nowhere, not even casting a glance her way as they chattered excitedly about notifications they had received about the last of the Leonid showers, which were apparently happening right now. They moved in a herd, stampeding towards the elevators. Finally, there was the promise of the lights, the very reason for this cruise.

She watched as the last trickle of passengers squeezed into the lift. She should join them really, should look for Tommy and make sure he’d heard the announcement. Instead, she remained at the computer terminal, bound to her chair by a force as invisible as the lights had been thus far.

Soon, silence descended. She was alone again.

Anna paced in her suite. In the corner of the room was a pile of incriminating items. The waxed jacket. The pink beret. Paula’s mobile phone. Mark’s keys and phone. The plastic sheeting and the spanner.

She surveyed them all, the pieces that could be used as evidence against her, then she moved to the door, slid it open and stepped out onto the balcony. This time she ignored the snowflakes that the wind spat at her. Leaning over the side, she glanced down, saw the merriment of some sort of party on the balcony below. A handful of people, music from an iPhone speaker. They huddled in their coats, arms and voices raised, glasses clinking as they stared upwards, waiting for the last of the light show.