Page 13 of Escape to the Sun

He took her action as a dismissal, turning to retrace his steps as Millie sped towards her. A glance at his retreating figure had Hannah covering her mouth with a hand as she noticed the smudge of blue on the back of his shirt, stark against its perfect crisp whiteness. Millie grinned at the captain as he passed her, the grin turning to a look of horror as she too clocked the paint on his back.

Ruth checked her watch – she should already have been at the gallery to collect Millie but had got caught up watching a ballroom dancing demonstration in the theatre. She hadn’t really appreciated the breadth of events and entertainments that would be available and although the waltzing was probably the last thing Millie – and definitely Nathan – would want to watch, she’d enjoyed it.

Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to have had a husband who wanted to dance with her like that. Or at all, if she was being brutally honest. Trev always claimed to have two left feet and preferred to prop up the bar rather than venture onto the dance floor. Another cliché, she realised, the old chestnut of being a bloke who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – dance. Ruth couldn’t help but wonder if he’d favoured watching over doing so that he could, well, watch. Or keep his options open, maybe. Lurk at the bar in the hopes that someone younger, prettier, sexier than Ruth had wandered into his vicinity.

Neither of them had been spring chickens when they married, and sometimes Ruth wondered if it had been more of a convenient arrangement for Trev, to have someone to sort his laundry for him and cook dinner. Someone who was nearing the final curtain of their biological clock and was, therefore, more malleable. Vulnerable, even.

Ruth pulled in a breath as she beetled towards the lifts to head up to the art gallery. However she framed it, however shit it had ended up being, she’d got two beautiful kids out of the deal. And even though Nathan was showing all the tendencies of your typical angsty teen, she loved her son with a fierce intensity it was difficult to describe. He might be a pain in the posterior, but she’d throw herself in front of a bus for him, no question.

And Millie – well, Ruth couldn’t do anything other than grin as she headed for the studio end of the gallery. She could spot Millie’s paintings a mile off. Even when they weren’t aboard a cruise ship, surrounded by an actual ocean, her pictures almost always entertained an element of wild water. In this painting she’d gone all out. Dolphins leapt from a frothy-looking sea, with a signature shark’s fin lurking in the background. For some reason there was a life raft in the foreground, piled high with what looked like orange hockey balls, a couple of lemons and a wonky jug. A glance at the still life in the room had Ruth revising her thoughts. Oranges. They were oranges.

‘I got blue paint on the captain,’ Millie said, as a greeting.

‘How did you manage that?’ Ruth asked.

‘To be fair, it was probably my fault.’

The voice came from behind Ruth, but it was vaguely familiar. She turned to greet Hannah, grinning with a mixture of embarrassment and recognition.

‘Hannah! Hi. How are you?’

Millie swivelled her gaze between the two of them. ‘Do you know everyone on board, Hannah?’

‘No, but I did meet your mum by chance the other day.’ Hannah turned her attention to Ruth. ‘I’m sorry I upped and left – it was all a bit too much,’ she said, wiping some freshly washed brushes in tissue to dry them.

‘I should be the one apologising to you. I overstepped. As usual.’

Millie rolled her eyes. ‘What did you do this time, Mum?’

‘What did I do? Never mind me, how did you cover the captain with paint? I’m mortified.’

‘Don’t be,’ Hannah said. ‘He did it to himself, backed up on the brush. Millie wasn’t even here. Just one of those things.’

‘And he didn’t even realise, so that’s fine, I think. It’s exciting though, to know someone who knows the captain of the ship, don’t you think, Mum?’

Hannah frowned. ‘I don’t know him. I visited the bridge, that’s all. He was very kind.’

Millie tilted her head. ‘Yeah. Right.’

Hannah frowned, then changed the subject. ‘I didn’t realise Ruth’s your mum. You wouldn’t think on a ship with this many passengers anyone would see the same people more than once, would you?’

‘I’m kind of hoping I don’t see my brother more than once the entire trip,’ Millie said, unaware of how her words stabbed at Ruth’s heart.

‘You don’t mean that, Mils,’ she said.

‘I do. I mean, I get that we are all sleeping in the same cabin – bleurgh – so I have to see him then, but the rest of the time is what I’m talking about.’

‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ Hannah asked.

Millie’s floodgates opened. ‘What’s right with Nathan would be a better question. Do you have a brother?’

‘I do,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s much younger than me, so maybe it isn’t the same, but I only find him annoying some of the time.’

‘Well, Nathan is annoying even when he’s asleep. He breathes so loudly, sometimes he even snores. And the smells he makes…’ Millie wafted a hand in front of her face, and Ruth was mortified all over again.

‘Millie, stop it. Poor Nathan.’

Hannah slid onto the stool beside Millie, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘Let you into a secret, Millie. They all do that – even the fully adult versions.’