In silence the elevator sped upwards, and Anna angled herself so that she was almost touching Tommy’s side. As the lift came to a stop, he jerked as if stung, and looked down at her. Anna smiled at him and together they exited.

‘Thank you for being my dinner date,’ she said huskily as they walked along the hallway.

He stopped outside his own suite, and she saw the frown on his face as he clocked that the door was slightly ajar.

‘See ya,’ she said, pretending not to notice, and threw him a small wave over her shoulder. She made no mention of Paula, and as she slipped inside her room, she was aware of him still watching her until she closed the door silently behind her.

In her medicated sleep, Paula dreamed of the Northern Lights. She lifted her head and watched the green glow as it filled the sky, then wrapped her arms around herself, feeling troubled. She had thought the lights would be beautiful. Instead, they were sinister, shrouding her, wrapping her up too tight. So tight that she couldn’t breathe. Beneath her feet, the ground swirled and rippled. It was the maelstrom that she had heard about. It pulled her into its magnetic grip until she was spinning and spinning, down, down, down. All the while Tommy stood nearby, impervious to her distress, his eyes on the sky, his face filled with wonder.

There was a loud noise, a repetitive clanging and banging, and a pressure on her shoulders. Through the fog of sleep, Paula pushed against it, forcing her eyes open. Her eyeballs stung and she winced at the harsh white light. The green was gone, and she was back in her chair in the Expedition Suite. Everything crashed back at her: she was locked in the suite, and her phone was missing, and Tommy… she didn’t even know if he had made it back onto the ship. And now somebody was in her room, standing over her, looming and pushing at her.

She yelped, thrashed at the heavy shape with her arms, swinging and hitting, remembering being on the deck, the mass there that had shoved at her and tried to kill her.

She screamed. A hand, rough and big, clamped down on her mouth and a voice hissed in her ear.

‘Jesus, Paula, it’s me!’

She wriggled away. ‘Tommy?’

He moved away to sit in the chair opposite her. ‘You were dead to the world.’

She shuddered at his words and struggled to sit up. ‘Did you see the Northern Lights?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Nah, too much cloud tonight. Couldn’t even see the moon. What happened to you at dinner?’

It had been a dream, she realised, those horrible, terrible green lights, the maelstrom. And… dinner?

She pushed herself up and out of the chair, staggered as her body kept moving even when she stopped walking. Tommy put a hand out towards her.