Page 10 of Escape to the Sun

‘Definitely a shark.’ With a decisive nod, Millie turned to Ruth. ‘We’d be able to see more from higher up. We should probably hurry, otherwise it’s going to be too dark to spot more sharks and stuff.’

Ruth grinned into the upturned collar of her coat as she made to follow her daughter back towards the lifts. A solitary man faced the ocean, hadn’t moved in the time they’d been there, his features obliterated by the upturned collar of his own jacket, the salt and pepper of his short hair being tousled and ruffled by the constant breeze. As Ruth passed him, she could see him twisting his wedding band with the fingers of his right hand, his attention on the seascape – total.

‘Race you to the lifts,’ Ruth said, setting off after a squealing Millie.

7

By the second afternoon of cruising across the Atlantic, Hannah had settled into a pattern, of sorts. It would take three full sailing days to reach their first stop in the Azores, and then another five days to reach the Caribbean. When she and Ian had discussed their honeymoon, it had been part of the appeal to have such a stretch of time together. No work, no family, no external demands… just them. He’d looked sideways at her when she’d jokingly asked what they’d spend their time doing.

She hadn’t been being completely facetious with her comment. They’d been together for years; it wasn’t as though they were waiting until their wedding night to get intimate, so the honeymoon wouldn’t be spent exploring one another’s bodies like newly discovered buried treasure. They’d already done all that.

To be honest, after a hectic autumn and pre-Christmas season at the deli, Hannah had been looking forward to having a rest alongside all the traditional honeymoon activities.

Well, as it turned out, she’d be managing to get plenty of the former. She really did have nothing to do. It wasn’t how she’d envisioned spending the cruising days, but since hiding out in her cabin for a while after her unexpected soul-bearing with Ruth, Hannah had eventually decided to make a little more of the journeying time by seeing what was on offer on board the Ballygowan.

For the second afternoon running, Hannah was high up on deck 9, where she’d discovered a fantastic art gallery. Not only were there plenty of pieces of quality art displayed for people to enjoy as they wandered around the space, but the director also ran art lessons for anyone on the Ballygowan to join in with.

Art had always been Hannah’s passion. While still at school, she’d volunteered at a local art gallery alongside working in the family deli, much to her parents’ irritation. It had been a battle to get them to agree to her taking a degree in fine art. Her father didn’t understand the need, when there was a deli to be run. But Hannah had always hankered after working professionally in an art gallery or a museum. She’d dreamed of heading for London, curating art in a gallery or working somewhere like The Wallace Collection.

During her university years, Hannah met Ian and by the time she graduated she was in love, and so staying home and working with her family, staying close to Ian, too, had seemed the obvious path. Art had been pushed further and further into the background, with work and Ian taking up the bulk of her time.

Now she finally had some spare time, she was more than content to while away a few hours of it working on a still life set up by April, the ship’s resident art director.

When Hannah had wandered into the designated alcove and asked to join the group, the director had been very welcoming.

‘Couldn’t book a nude model,’ April had said, her flowing grey hair fanning out as she leant in conspiratorially over Hannah’s shoulder, studying her initial sketch. ‘Apparently, it doesn’t go down well with everyone, so…’

Hannah was rather relieved, to be honest. For one thing, the arrangement of jugs and citrus fruits – not hugely imaginative, but challenging enough to get right, especially the clear glass jug on the right – was always left in situ. April had showed Hannah where the art equipment was kept and it seemed she could come and paint whenever she felt like it, not only when April was running a class. So, Hannah could come and go as she pleased.

Also, the last thing Hannah wanted to be sketching was naked flesh, of whatever gender. It was always portrayed on TV as being all erotic and exciting. Usually the model was some gorgeous bloke all the students were supposed to fall for, or it was a young woman who then got taken advantage of by the artist – either way, in Hannah’s experience it wasn’t really like that. After taking some classes during which she was subjected to watching one particular male model repeatedly scratching parts of himself she’d have preferred him to have hidden with an artfully bent leg, Hannah had decided it wasn’t particularly her bag.

Today, she was firming up some of her initial sketching and was wondering how best to incorporate the view behind the arrangement – the rest of the gallery and large windows giving way to the seascape beyond. She wanted to include it all, somehow, to mark this grouping of jugs and citrus fruits out from any other.

‘Everything OK?’ April said, making Hannah jump – her concentration had been total, something she hadn’t managed with anything else since she found out about Ian’s infidelity.

‘Absolutely fine,’ Hannah said.

‘Millie wants to have a go, too – is that OK with you?’

Finally, Hannah looked up from her easel. A young girl stood beside April, a pencil case clutched in one hand, a look of insecurity on her oval face as she stared at Hannah, then at her work.

‘You’re really good,’ Millie said. ‘I like your oranges.’

Hannah stifled a laugh. ‘That’s very kind, thanks.’

‘No, I’m not being kind. They are good. Mine always end up lopsided.’

‘Well,’ April said, settling an easel beside Hannah’s, ‘Let’s see if we can do something about your lopsided oranges, Millie, shall we?’

Hannah smiled, turning back to her canvas and settling into the one place where she could truly forget all the negativity that had accompanied her on the cruise.

It was ridiculous, really, but it had taken every scrap of Louis’ determination to phone his father and suggest they meet. He’d offered his dad a tour of the ship together, and he had seemed politely enthusiastic about the idea. Although now they were topside, standing side by side and staring out at the Atlantic, stretching in front of them for what looked like eternity, Louis couldn’t think of anything to say.

The epaulets on the shoulders of his shirt, an extra gold line in place to signify his rank – however fleeting his captainship might end up being – riffled in the breeze. It was almost as though they wanted to be noticed, were trying to do the heavy lifting for Louis, who had no idea how to say the things he really wanted to. About how he hadn’t ever really understood what it was his father wanted from him, how he’d tried his hardest – or thought he had – and how difficult it had been to deal with his own failures, without having his father piling on the guilt.

He knew only too well what his parents had sacrificed for him, and that, essentially, he’d come up short and let them down. But more than all that – right at the top of the pile and burning a hole in him – Louis had no idea how to express how sad he was, right now, and had been for months, because his mum was gone and he hadn’t the first idea how to deal with it.

The only thing Louis had ever known was pushing as hard as he could, whether it was with the racing out of Southlands Marina, chasing the Olympic dream, or latterly, pushing his career in cruising so hard it squeaked. He’d tried his best to please his mum by finding a special woman to settle down with – he knew that was what she’d wanted above all else. And how it felt to know that even then, even after trying as hard as he could, he’d still failed.