He stares at me with his grey-blue eyes. Gentle lines have appeared across his forehead.
‘I’m wondering if you can look something up for me. I’m looking for Coral Sea Dreaming, and I can’t seem to spot their boat anywhere.’
His expression transforms from confused to crestfallen. ‘You’re on . . .’ He pauses and coughs once, like he’s dislodging something from his throat. ‘You’re with Coral Sea Dreaming?’ His accent elongates the name, making it sound like ‘coral sea drayming’.
‘Yeah . . . are you?’
He grunts, which I assume is an affirmative. A pit of dread pools in my stomach.How can the one person who spotted my sunscreen mess-up be on my boat?Aren’t there, like, a thousand boats here?
‘Can’t find that bugger anywhere,’ he says, not meeting my eyes.
‘Have you tried their website? I would but I haven’t got any signal,’ I offer.
‘Yes.’ His tone is curt. I can feel him thinking,Obviously, but he doesn’t say it out loud.
I start to introduce myself, outstretching a hand in his direction, but just as I do, his phone vibrates in his hand and a voice starts sounding out directions. ‘I think it’s this way,’ he says, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders and leaving my hand hanging limply in the air.
‘It’s Millie,’ I mutter, slowly testing out my new identity, but he’s too far ahead to hear me, so my hand returns limply to my side.
We work our way through the docks, ducking under signs and stepping over mounds of seagull poop. Angry suntan man takes a sharp turn to follow a narrower dock. He’s a whole head taller than I am, which makes navigating through the signs nailed to swaying sailboats much faster. Instead of squinting at them, I follow his broad shoulders. Soon we’re all the way at the end of the pier.
We stop in front of a small sailboat, maybe about fifty feet long. ‘CORAL SEA DREAMING’ is written in large blue lettering across the side. Benches line the back of the boat in a large square around what must be the captain’s chair. A man and a woman are sitting on one of the benches, their hands intertwined. Her head is resting on his shoulder and he’s showing her something on his phone. In unison, they both start to laugh.
I can’t help but think about Zach.That could have been us. I wonder if we ever actually looked like that. We didn’t exactly share a sense of humour. I shake my head. I don’t want to think about him now. For the next five days and four nights, I am Millie. My first goal is to find the butterfly wrasse. Thinking about the life I left behind comes second.
Clouds dot the sky, but I feel my shoulders starting to sunburn anyway, and I pivot my attention to the cover over the back of the boat that protects the benches and the captain from the sun. I glance at angry suntan man, who looks remarkably less angry and instead like he may start to enjoy himself. He’s got a smirk on his face that reads,Aren’t you gonna thank me?I don’t thank him. Instead, I ruminate on how annoying I think his tan is. I bet he isn’t in a rush to put on sunscreen.
The boat is a flurry of activity. I see a woman with a messy bun ducking in and out of the room on the middle of the deck. A dark-haired man is flitting from bow to stern and back again. I know based on Millie’s registration that the boat can fit twelve, but looking at it now, I don’t see how. All I can see is a flat white deck, a large white sail, the captain’s chair at the back, surrounded by benches and covered by an overhang, and in the middle of the boat, something that looks like a small cabin.
An extremely tanned barefoot man with blond dreads and dark sunglasses deftly manoeuvres past us and jumps onto the boat with the agility of a jungle cat. Angry suntan man and I exchange a look. I can tell he’s also wondering what’s going on. A second later the man with dreads pops back out onto the pier and greets us.
‘I’m Aaron,’ he states, like that explains everything. ‘I’ll grab your stuff.’ He reaches for my suitcase and flings it on board like it’s weightless. I cringe at the memory of having to kick it into the compartment underneath the bus.
‘I don’t need to show you ID?’ I call after Aaron, but it’s too late, he’s already climbing aboard with my bag. He picks up angry suntan man’s next. Only once he’s stored our luggage does he pop back out onto the deck. ‘Shoes into the bin,’ he says, looking down at us and gesturing at a large storage container on the dock. ‘No shoes aboard.’ We shrug and both chuck our flip-flops into the container.
‘Welcome toCoral Sea Dreaming,’ Aaron announces, stretching his arms out wide. ‘I’m your captain.’
The woman with the messy bun pops up next to him. ‘And I’m your first mate, Vanessa,’ she says in a lilting Italian accent. A stray lock of dark hair whips around her cheek. ‘I’ll check you in in a minute. Feel free to make yourself comfortable.’
I smile back at her. Aaron and Vanessa seem chill. There- is potential for this to be the restart I need. The shrill caw of a seagull cuts through the air. Buoyed with excitement, I toss my backpack onto the boat and step over the side.
I take a few shaky steps across the boat, which is lurching gently even though it’s securely tied to the pier. I settle onto a bench under the covered overhang next to Aaron’s chair. I hug my backpack close to my chest. I take inventory of my home for the next five days.
The boat is clean, which is what I was most worried about. The deck doesn’t feel dirty underneath my feet, just textured and grippy, which I assume is to help keep people from slipping. Everything smells a little damp and a little like salt, but it’s a nice, reassuring smell. The bench I’m sitting on is comfortable, a worn-in vinyl material that’s cracked in spots and a faded light blue.
I realise that the room I was seeing before is really a doorway with steps that lead to the sleeping quarters. Apart from what I feel like is the captain’s room, the rest of the boat is small. When I think about it, I realise I’ve never been trapped anywhere this small in my life. From the back to the front of the boat there’s just two narrow walkways on either side of the centre platform. The scuba equipment is set up at the front of the boat. I can see a line of air tanks. The platform in the middle of the boat looks like an ideal place to sunbathe. But I can’t help but notice that there’s nowhere to go if things go sideways. If anyone figures out I’m not Millie, I’m totally stuck.
In an attempt to stop myself from getting claustrophobic, I look out at the horizon and take in the crystal blue water and the gently sloping mountains. I will probably never be somewhere as pretty as this again. The thought both calms and depresses me.
When my gaze swings back to the boat, I find angry suntan man looking at me intently. He quickly looks away, but after a beat his stare returns.
‘What?’ I ask, exasperation creeping into my voice. ‘Am I in your seat? Are you going to lecture me about sunscreen again?’
‘What?’ he says, the line between his eyebrows appearing again. ‘No, you’re not in my seat. I was actually going to ask if you want to go get suncream. Vanessa said we have fifteen minutes before check-in starts.’
‘Oh,’ I manage to get out.Maybe he isn’t 100 per cent asshole after all . . .‘Yeah. That would be nice.’
‘There’s a place at the edge of the pier. Let’s go,’ he says gruffly, ducking underneath the overhang and making his way back to the ladder.
