‘Mr Regas’ assistant,’ she said finally, clearly having decided that this information didn’t qualify as ‘classified’.
‘Ah.’ Ore smiled brightly. ‘Thanks very much for that.’ She gestured to the empty glass. ‘I feel much better already.’ Vicky nodded curtly. This had not been the plan. She had hoped to charm all the staff from the word go. They were the key to this story after all – a profile was just a puff piece if you didn’t go hard on background.
Suddenly she remembered the captain in the corridor. ‘I should apologise to Captain Wilsons,’ she said, trying to stand. Immediately a wave of nausea washed over her, and she quickly sat back down.
‘Oh don’t worry about him; he’s just a contractor. He’ll hardly be able to tell you anything about Mr Regas, and that’s why you’re here right?’ Ore felt very much that Vicky was the one calling the shots in this conversation. She had forfeited that privilege the moment she was found covered in her own sick.
‘Noted.’ Ore was keen to get to her room and get herself inthe zone before dinner with Chuck. She wasn’t going to let this false start dampen her enthusiasm. ‘I think I’ll head to my room now if that’s OK? I’m not sure where my bags are though …’
‘Oscar will have taken them off the chopper to the room already.’ Vicky was already at the door. Ore scrambled after her, noticing that the captain was nowhere to be seen as she was marched down the corridor, up some stairs, down some others, through a door and then down again. Ore realised she was going to have a hard time navigating this boat – literallyandfiguratively.
‘Here we are.’ The door in front of them was made of highly polished wood, not the flimsy beige laminate she had just seen in the crew quarters. Ore pushed it open and gasped.
The first thing that struck her was the light, streaming in through two floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the space. It was immense and momentarily blinding, somehow more so than being outside in its direct reach. Once her eyes adjusted from the gloomy corridor, the distinction between the midday expanse of sunlight sky, and the sparkle-dappled waves came into focus. They both stretched out into the infinite horizon. Wandering around the boat, she had begun to feel what she guessed was something like cabin fever. But the room in front of her was about as far from a ‘cabin’ as you could get.
The bed was huge, and half covered in an array of unnecessary cushions of various sizes. The carpet underfoot was plush and the ceiling surprisingly high.
‘This is the bathroom.’ Vicky pointed to another door, which stood opposite a huge built-in wardrobe. Ore was almost salivating over the shelf space, as she thought about the plasticcrates stuffed full of clothes, crammed under her bed in her tiny room in Queens.
Ore turned the handle. She had high hopes for this bathroom, and she was not disappointed. For a moment her mind went on a tangent, trying to imagine how you go about getting a standalone marble bath onto a boat.
‘Your bags are here.’ Vicky, of course, was impervious, and seemed impatient to get on with other, more important things.
‘Thank you very much – the room is absolutely lovely.’ Ore couldn’t help her childish glee.
Vicky smiled politely, though it never reached her eyes, then bowed her head slightly as she backed out of the room.
Ore was impatient to take stock of her home for the next two weeks. She would have to go exploring before dinner. It wasn’t often that her freelance gigs involved staying on a six-hundred-million-dollar superyacht. Admittedly, that was only an estimate – it turned out the world of the international super-rich and the value of their assets were frustratingly opaque. She assumed that was the point. Maybe she would just ask Chuck directly. He had seemed surprisingly friendly, forthcoming even, when they had spoken on the phone.
Ore supposed that she was in a strange position in the hierarchy of the boat: not quite guest and not quite staff. A spy then, she thought mischievously.
It was hard to believe that this time two weeks ago she had been in despair, wondering if she even wanted to be a journalist anymore, and now here she was, in the thick of it and raring to go. Pulled back into the here and now, she knew that the very first thing to do was shower and change, and then let the adventure begin.
