Ordinarily she wanted to watch television but couldn’t bear to watch. She might see, for instance, an actor in a movie whom she’d met fifteen years ago on a soap: Now how did he get that break? She might see young, talentless, gleaming people. It appalled her, the jealousy of her middle age, though it flared up only occasionally, a trick knee. Lumbago, whatever lumbago was. Spiritual arthritis. As a young woman she was (she believed) mostly generous, entirely sane, and the acting jobs she got, the soaps and reenactment shows and cartoon voice-overs, had seemed like good fortune. Now everything was a conspiracy, mean and purposeful, designed to hurt her, and while she knew there were people who saw her in the piebald, pirate-y Mistress Mickle costume on Barnaby Grudge and were filled with jealousy themselves, this knowledge didn’t comfort her: indeed, when she stopped to contemplate it, she felt demeaned.

Knock it off, she told herself. New year. She plumped the pillow. It was a real pillow. It was a good ship. She checked her heart. Beating.

No dogs, still.

She never quite fell asleep, but she observed, as though from a distance, obscure, outlandish thoughts as they alighted: Would Jonas take the Irishwoman’s bed, or would he keep obediently to his mat beneath the kitchen table? Why beneath the table? Oh, to avoid being stepped on. A baby in a hat might crawl by, too—now, what did that mean? she asked herself in an Irish accent. The sea grew rough: every now and then a wave lifted the boat up and set it down with a minor clunk, and the back room of her brain thought, Ah, the plane has landed.

She sat up after thinking this for the third time. Not plane, boat. The television showed its series of empty kennels. It looked like a prison break: I don’t know, Sarge, the cells were all full half an hour ago.

Between the beds a large, lozenge-shaped window. A porthole. A window that would allow nobody to spy on you. She regarded the polished green sea cut through with unpolished white foam. She heard an ululating child run down the corridor outside: toddler Doppler effect. Other than that, the cabin was the most complete privacy one could imagine while still surrounded by hundreds of people, and superb. There was nothing she didn’t like. How to fully enjoy it? She had an urge to transgress, to drink the pygmy minibar red wine, then the white, then the two cans of Heineken, to strip and press her nakedness against the porthole.

Who would know? Some unseen sailor with a telescope. Satellites. Aliens. Nobody. Fish.

She didn’t drink anymore. Hours to go before Harwich. She needed to get out.