Once we’ve chosen from the heaped fruit and pastries, the bains-marie of bacon and potatoes and eggs, we find a vacant table beside a window, on the starboard side of the ship. There are two dining rooms that serve breakfast and I’ve already forgotten their names. They both sound like Italian mobsters. Food is everywhere—I can’t escape it. For an extra cost we can eat Japanese, Brazilian, pizza in the fake Italian piazza or Ben and Jerry’s. Just swipe your room card to eat more calories than you’d ever consume on land.

I can tell the cruise regulars because they have lanyards for their key cards—ranging from the simple kind they got for free at a work conference to the bling-laden version that screams bridge-playing retiree. Grandma has a tasteful lanyard of blue and white beads—they’re plastic, she says. I don’t have one, and don’t have a pocket on my dress, so I’ve stuck the key card in my bra. Plenty of room in there.

Ash says he doesn’t mind my lack of boobs. Says he prefers it, which I find hard to believe. Was it only yesterday we drove down together from LA? Already it feels like weeks ago. We picked up Grandma from her retirement villa near San Diego among the glaring green golf courses and electric carts, the Lincoln Town Cars and permed ladies in perma-creased pants with white-soled shoes. Grandma hadn’t met Ash yet. I had only mentioned him once or twice. I worried she’d say something to embarrass me—she loves to remind me how at my age she was married. As we sat in traffic Ash tapped his fingers on the wheel. Grandma was surprisingly quiet though, her head nodding to the jazz playing low on the radio.

‘What do you normally do on cruises to pass the time?’ Ash asked her as he drove us to the dock.

‘Play a lot of bridge, go to the shows. I dance if anyone asks me. Walk the decks. I’ve never been on one this long, one with a destination. I always bring something to read but I never seem to find the time. Mostly, I plan to enjoy the company of my granddaughter. Did you bring a book, Hannah?’

Grandma reached back from the passenger seat and patted my knee with her manicured fingers, and I put my soap-dried hand on top of hers.

‘Did I ever. I have a stack of textbooks I’m meant to read.’

‘Don’t tell me you brought all your nursing textbooks,’ Ash said, looking at me in the rear-view mirror. He was wearing his Ray-Bans. It was hard to tell if he was joking when I couldn’t see his eyes.

‘I did.’

‘It’s a vacation, babe. You’re not going to want to study.’