A Week in Winter(56)

‘Well, come to my office and make an appointment,’ Nicola begged. ‘I’ll fit you in to tie in with your time off.’

Then there was the Captain’s cocktail party, where they noticed that there was nobody from Cabin 5347.

‘They’re having an early supper,’ Nicola explained.

‘They like to be left on their own,’ Henry added.

They got to know Helen over the nine days. She said how she missed teaching; she had loved the classroom, and the joy of making children understand something in the end. She thanked them from the bottom of her heart and said they were good people who deserved all their happiness. Henry and Nicola probed her gently about what things would be like when she returned home.

‘Same as before,’ she said glumly, ‘but at least we will have all this to look back on. It was money well spent.’

‘Any more legacies likely?’ Henry tried to lighten it a little.

‘No, but I still have a thousand pounds. That will buy a few treats.’ Again that sad smile.

They docked at Southampton. Nicola and Henry began to breathe more easily.

Helen had hired a car to drive them to London. They would take a taxi from the disembarkation point to bring them to the car-rental place.

They exchanged addresses.

‘Send me a postcard from your next cruise,’ Helen said, as if they were casual shipboard acquaintances rather than accomplices for nine days and nights.

‘Yes, and you tell us how things are going,’ Nicola said. Her voice was hollow.

It would be, as Helen had foreseen, the same as before.

The officers and crew stood on deck to bid farewell to the passengers. Nicola and Henry embraced Helen as she left, supporting a parent on each arm. They saw her walk down the gangway, her stocky little figure steady and her head held high.

The cleaners were already at work on the ship when Nicola and Henry began to disembark. They would drive home and spend ten days catching up with their parents and friends until the next cruise, this time to Madeira and the Canary Islands.

They were just saying goodbye to the Cruise Director when they heard the news. There had been a terrible accident just outside Southampton, a car crash, three fatalities – all of them passengers just disembarked from this cruise. Henry and Nicola looked at each other, stricken. Before the Cruise Director spoke, they knew.

‘It appears to be suicide, can you believe it? She got into her hired car and drove them all into a wall. A total wreck, they were all killed instantly. They found the labels for the cruise ship, so they contacted us. It must have been that woman Helen Morris and her parents from Cabin 5347, apparently . . .’

‘It must have been an accident.’ Henry could barely speak.

‘Don’t think so. Witnesses say she stopped the car and reversed a distance and then drove straight at the wall. God, why did she do that?’

‘We don’t know that she did . . .’ Nicola began.

‘We do, Nicola. The law is here, they are making enquiries. We have to talk to the police, make statements.’

The Cruise Director was crisp and to the point.

‘We are covered, aren’t we, Henry? You didn’t spot anything, did you?’

It seemed to Henry like an age before he answered but it was probably only four seconds.

‘No, she seemed fine. Very positive.’ The Cruise Director was relieved but still worried.

‘And the old folk? Were they OK?’

‘They were frail but she was well able to look after them,’ he said, and set in train a series of lies that he and Nicola managed for the next twenty-four hours.

Before they left the ship, Henry sought out Beata. Had she heard the news? Yes, everyone had heard. Beata looked at Henry with a very steady, level glance.

‘It is so sad for the poor lady and her family, but how good that they had a happy holiday at the end of their lives.’ She was begging him to say nothing. She too would be in trouble for keeping the secret.

He kissed her goodbye on the cheek.

‘Perhaps we will meet on another cruise, Dr Henry.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Henry said. He felt his days as a ship’s doctor were over. From now on he would do what he had set out to do: heal people, make their quality of life better, not bend rules for sentiment’s sake and end up with the deaths of three people on his hands.

‘She would have done it anyway,’ Nicola pleaded as they drove back to Esher.

He stared ahead without answering.

‘She would have done it in Bergen or Troms? or wherever . . .’

Still silence.

‘You know, you just gave her nine extra days of a holiday. That’s all you did. All we did.’

‘I broke the rules. I played God. There’s no escaping that.’

‘I love you, Henry.’

‘And I love you, but that doesn’t change what has happened.’

They told nobody about it. They gave no explanation to anyone about why they were giving up what sounded like the very best job on earth. They offered themselves as volunteers in programmes researching suicide prevention and coping with depression. They withdrew from friends and family. They took short-term locum positions. The dream of a small country practice had slipped away. They didn’t feel they would be up to it. They had been tested and were found wanting.

Eventually, Henry’s parents decided to speak their minds. It was after yet another silent, depressed Sunday lunch in their home.