Page 9 of Escape to the Sun

‘Mine too. Although he wasn’t even my husband. I found out a few weeks before the wedding.’

Ruth paused, grimacing. ‘Oh God. Sorry. Now I feel really bad. At least Trev waited a decade or so before he fell for the charms of his secretary. At least, I think he did… Such a cliché, but then he’s a walking cliché, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. And the irony is he didn’t even end up with her. She dumped him for his boss. Found himself another sucker though. A young and rather beautiful one, as it happens.’ Ruth shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.’

‘Mmm?’ Hannah decided words were optional – mostly because she had no idea what to say after such a barrage of unrequested information.

Ruth frowned, taking in Hannah’s expression. ‘I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? Apologies – people tell me I’m an oversharer, that I don’t know when to stop. But I just mean it might have saved you a precious twenty years.’ Ruth gave a rueful smile, an expression flitting across her face that Hannah couldn’t quite place. ‘Maybe you’ve dodged a bullet, is what I’m trying, very clumsily, to say.’

Did it feel like that? Like she’d had a lucky escape from Ian? She supposed logic might dictate as much, but logic was competing against a far more powerful adversary. Because battling against love was a seriously tough gig. There was no ignoring the fact that Hannah had loved Ian with a fierce enough intensity to have thought there could be no possible future worth considering if he wasn’t a part of it… And yet, here she was, doing a lot more than considering it. Her situation was way past that. She was now facing a future without him, but with the emotions built over a decade of knowing him still tripping over themselves to hold her attention.

Hannah couldn’t reply, her throat constricted tightly enough to barely allow air to get through. She needed to get out, get back to her cabin before she broke down. Pushing her plate aside, Hannah stood, holding a hand up in what she hoped Ruth would interpret as an apologetic gesture as she fled the Crow’s Nest and ran all the way back to her cabin, locking herself inside as she began to sob.

6

Ruth should be used to chivvying her children by now. She’d been at it for a decade and a half. Somehow, though, the irritation of a slow-moving child still grated.

‘Come on, Millie,’ she said, doing her best to keep her tone light. ‘It’ll be dark before we get there at this rate. I thought you wanted to see the view?’

‘Well, that’s OK,’ Millie said, peering up from the laces of her battered old trainers. ‘If it’s dark we’ll see the stars. I’ll bet Nathan won’t see them; he’ll be too busy staring at his own navel…’

She stifled a laugh – her daughter was a magpie for sayings, the navel-gazing comment one of Ruth’s own mother’s favourites. She’d applied it to her ex-son-in-law Trev on many occasions. Unfortunately, Millie didn’t stop there. ‘Then Nathan can go and stick it up his⁠—’

‘Up his jumper,’ Ruth hurried to finish her daughter’s sentence for her, concern biting at what Millie might have been about to say – wondering what phrase Nathan might have added to his sister’s repertoire.

‘Will I need a coat, Mum?’ Millie asked, straightening and frowning at her feet, wriggling the grubby trainers Ruth really should have replaced by now.

‘Let’s take coats,’ Ruth said, gathering up her daughter’s padded jacket alongside her own. ‘Then we’ll have them if it’s cold at the top of the boat.’

‘Ship, Mum – it’s a ship, remember?’

Ruth grinned. Being corrected by Millie had yet to take on the feel of being lectured by a wannabe gangster, like it was when Nathan had a go at her about something she’d said in error. ‘Quite right, Mils. Ship. Right, have we got everything?’

The plan was to walk partway around the outside of the ship on their deck – the promenade deck and named as such due to a walkway stretching the length of both sides of the ship and linked at either end.

Once their walk was completed, they were planning to head to the very top deck of the ship, via a peek into the art studio, where Ruth hoped she might be able to sign Millie up for some art sessions.

Nathan was still behaving as though being polite to Ruth would result in someone lopping off one of his hands in punishment – he had spent the sailing day mooching around the ship. Sometimes it was easier to let him work his frustrations out by himself. Or maybe that was just what Ruth chose to internalise to make herself feel better. But at least he was relatively safe on the Ballygowan. No roads to get killed on, no drug dealers trying to push God only knew what on him.

At least, she hoped not.

She’d transferred twenty pounds into his banking app earlier that morning, told him to make it last and on no account to charge anything to the cabin, and she hadn’t seen him since.

As they hit the cold air of the open promenade they bundled into their coats, and Millie struck off in the lead along the walkway with Ruth trailing behind her.

As she walked, Ruth felt a stab of guilt about Hannah – the young woman she’d met in the Crow’s Nest the previous afternoon. The expression on Hannah’s face as she’d got abruptly to her feet and shot away from the table had made Ruth’s cheeks flush with colour, forcing her to make a feeble attempt at downing the tea she’d only just poured, and therefore scalded the roof of her mouth, before she too skulked away.

During the breakdown of her marriage, Ruth had discovered just who out of her friends was Team Ruth, and how many of them – the majority, as it turned out – were Team Trev. It had been a sobering experience and while she’d wanted to offer Hannah a sense of solidarity, to act as someone who knew just how difficult the coming months were likely to be for her – it occurred to Ruth that she’d actually achieved the opposite. She’d made the poor woman focus even more intently on a devastating situation.

Ruth took a lungful of bracing, briny air and allowed the wind to whistle around the back of her neck, shivering before she pulled the collar of her coat up and buried her face in it. Probably just as well she and Hannah didn’t get as far as swapping cabin numbers. It was no doubt a lucky escape for the younger woman, not to have to endure Ruth wittering on again any time soon.

It became clear that on this deck they couldn’t access the pointy bit, as Millie had described it, rather the promenade wrapped itself around the front of the cabins and continued back along the other side.

Millie stood at the railings, hands on hips, every inch the lookout as her dark, curly hair whipped around her face.

‘We can see quite a lot from here,’ Millie shouted as Ruth came alongside her. A finger jutted out from the warmth of her padded jacket as Millie pointed at a dark shape in the water. ‘I think that might be a whale. Maybe a shark?’

Ruth suppressed a laugh. ‘Not sure sharks like it in cold water like this, Mils.’

Nevertheless, she strained to identify the shape in the water, failing and giving up as it disappeared.