Now that my seasickness had passed, I attacked the buffet table with gusto, imagining that one day I would be cooking this sort of food for Roy. (Of course, this was a fantasy, since I could barely cook the simple food I had grown up with.) One night, after cleaning my plate, I decided to choose something from the ice-cream cart.

A young man with a crew cut was scooping the different flavours from giant metal canisters into glass bowls.

‘What would you like?’ he asked, grinning. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to show an anchor tattoo on one bicep. The other bicep had a girl’s name—Marie.

‘What are the flavours?’

‘Vanilla, chocolate, butter pecan and Neapolitan,’ he said, pointing to the different canisters as he spoke. I’d never heard of Neapolitan, but it looked as though it had ribbons of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, each distinct from the other, and you got all three flavours together in a single scoop. I stood there for a moment, unable to cope with all the possibilities.

He coughed politely into his arm.

‘What’s your favourite?’ I asked.

‘I’m partial to the butter pecan. But if you can’t decide, you might want the Neapolitan. Or you could choose two or three.’

‘I’ll try butter pecan. I’ll save the others for another night.’

He scooped the ice-cream into a bowl and handed it to me with a wink, saying, ‘Good idea, there’s plenty of choices aboard this ship.’

I hurried back to my seat, making a mental note not to flirt with the ice-cream boy again.

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

Grandma is more excited than me that we are dining with the captain, and she insists we visit the hairdresser that afternoon. Her hair is set in curls and mine is blown straight. She paints my nails afterwards and I do hers—none of the elaborate designs we used to do in treatment, just a single colour, mauve for me and coral for her. Our cabin steward brings an ironing board and I iron Grandma’s blue satin dress on the lowest setting, and then the summery white linen dress which I bought on sale at Anthropologie in the Grove. At seven we walk up, arm in arm. There is an elevator but Grandma insists she will be fine on the stairs.

‘We’ll take the elevator later,’ she says. ‘After we’ve had a few drinks.’

She looks so elegant in her long dress, her white hair a froth around her head, her lips painted and her eyes as bright as they ever were. Her cheeks are rosy from the trick she taught me the first time she showed me how to apply lipstick, in the hospital, when I was thirteen. She used a tissue to blot my lips, and then rubbed the tissue into what she called the apples of my cheeks: the part that sticks out when you smile.