The Woman in Cabin 10(62)

But I didn’t let him finish. I pulled my wrist out of his grip and hurried away, through the doors and into the corridor, leaving him gaping after me.

I was so busy thinking about Ben that as I rounded the corner near the upper-deck toilet, I almost tripped over Anne Bullmer. She was leaning back against the wall as if steeling herself for something, although whether to return to the party, or make her way back to her cabin, I wasn’t sure. She looked extremely tired, her face gray, the shadows around her eyes darker than ever.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I gasped, and then, thinking of the bruise on her collarbone, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She smiled, the fine skin around her mouth crinkling, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m fine, I’m just very tired. Sometimes . . .” She swallowed, and her voice cracked for a moment, something in the cut-glass English accent slipping. “Sometimes it all just seems too much—d’you know what I mean? Such a performance.”

“I do,” I said sympathetically.

“If you’ll excuse me, I am going to bed,” she said, and I nodded and turned to make my own way back aft, down the flight of stairs that led to the rear set of cabins.


I was almost at the door of my suite when I heard an angry voice from behind me.

“Lo. Lo, wait, you can’t make those kind of accusations and walk away.”

Shit. Ben. I felt a strong urge to slip inside my cabin and slam the door, but I made myself turn to face him, my back against the door.

“I didn’t make any accusations. I just said what I’d been told.”

“You pretty much implied you’re suspecting me now! We’ve known each other more than ten years! Do you realize how that makes me feel—that you could accuse me of lying like that?”

There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now.

“I’m not making you feel anything,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m stating facts.”

“Facts? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous?” I folded my arms. “What does that mean?”

“I mean,” he said hotly, “that you’re acting completely paranoid. You’re seeing bogeymen behind every corner! Maybe Nilsson—”

He stopped. I clenched my fist around my delicate evening bag, feeling the solid bulk of my phone beneath the slippery sequins.

“Go on? Maybe Nilsson . . . what?”

“Nothing.”

“Maybe Nilsson was right? Maybe I am imagining things?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it was what you were implying, right?”

“I’m just asking you to take a step back and look at yourself, Lo. Look at this rationally, I mean.”

I forced myself to keep a hold on my temper and smiled.

“I am rational. But I’m very happy to take a step back.” And with that, I opened my suite door, stepped inside, and slammed it in his face.

“Lo!” I heard from outside, and a thump on the door. Then a pause. “Lo.”

I said nothing, just slid the bolt and the chain across. No one was getting through that door without a battering ram. Least of all Ben Howard.

“Lo!” He banged again. “Look, will you just talk to me? This is really getting out of hand. Will you at least tell me what you’re going to say to the police tomorrow?” He paused, waiting for me to reply. “Are you even listening?”

Ignoring him, I threw my bag on the bed, stripped off my evening gown, and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door and turning on the taps to drown out the sounds from outside. When at last I stepped into the scaldingly hot water and turned off the taps, the only sound I could hear was the gentle hum of the extractor fan. Thank God. He must have given up at last.


I had left my phone in the bedroom, so I wasn’t sure what time it was when I climbed out of the bath, but my fingers were waterlogged and wrinkled, and I felt heavy with sleep, but in a good way, quite unlike the nervous, edgy exhaustion of the last day or two. As I cleaned my teeth, dried my hair, and belted the white bathrobe around myself, I thought of the good night’s sleep I would have, and the logical, carefully rehearsed story I would give to the police tomorrow.

And then . . . Christ. I felt almost weak with relief thinking about it. Then I would get a bus or a train or whatever bloody transport Trondheim possessed and get myself to the nearest airport and home.

When I opened the door to the cabin, I held my breath, half expecting Ben’s hammering and shouting to start up again, but there was no sound. I walked cautiously to the door, my feet silent on the thick pale carpet, and, lifting the cover to the spy hole, I looked out into the corridor. There was no one there. At least no one I could make out—in spite of the fisheye lens, I could only see part of the corridor, but unless Ben were lying on the floor beneath my door, he was gone.