‘Mark, what is the gate for, in the middle of the railings down there?’ she asked.

He dragged deeply on his own cigarette and looked to where she gestured. ‘There are several of them. They’re for the lifeboats. In the event of an emergency, we can just open the gates and crane them out. See where they’re stored, behind those panels there, and the metal joints they’re attached to.’ He pointed with his cigarette and shrugged. ‘It’s a time-saver.’

She nodded and moved a little closer to him. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ she asked. ‘A kid could come along and open one and fall into the sea!’

He smiled; a patronising smile, she thought. Slightly irritating, but she waited patiently for his reply.

‘Nah, they’re padlocked,’ he said. ‘Only crew members can open them.’

One of them isn’t, she thought. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

‘It’s my day off tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’d like a tour of the ship?’

She smiled. He was hooked.

Within half an hour, Mark was in the Arctic Suite, naked, on top of Anna on the enormous bed, an almost-empty bottle of champagne clutched in one hand, a lit cigarette dangling from his full lips.

Anna counted silently inside her head. For her, sex, much like food, was something to be endured; an act that was sometimes necessary but from which she derived no pleasure. As Mark finished and let the champagne bottle drop from his hand to the floor, he muttered something into the pillow, words she didn’t catch, then shifted position and closed his eyes.

She plucked the cigarette from between his lips and placed it in her own mouth. Within minutes, he was snoring loudly. She slipped from the bed, and as she walked to the bathroom, she picked up the keys from where he had carelessly tossed them as he divested himself of his clothes.

In the bathroom, she turned the shower on and laid the bunch of keys on the floor. She identified the padlock keys easily, the ones that would open the gates in the railings. She moved past them; the gate she had her eye on was already unlocked. No, it was the master keys she was after, the ones Mark had shown her earlier. Unlike the credit-card-type keys the passengers used, the masters were actual keys. Four of them in all, and as she located the one that locked and unlocked the suites, she slipped it off and put it in the pocket of her robe. As an afterthought, she pulled off the key for the public restrooms.

When she went back into the bedroom, she put the keys carefully back next to Mark’s coat. On the bed, he slept on.