He Said/She Said(49)

‘You shouldn’t be allowed to drink,’ she shouts. I hold the phone away from my ear, like men do in sitcoms. Yes, I’m in trouble now, but she’s not talking about my Facebook account and this will in time be written off as a mistake, not a deception.

‘You need to get them to take it down, now,’ she’s saying when I put the phone back to my ear.

‘Look, I’m sorry, I had no idea anyone was going to upload it.’

‘It’s rule number one! Don’t get yourself pictured. You got yourself fucking filmed.’ She’s crying now.

‘Please don’t get wound up, it’s not good for the bab—’

‘Don’t you tell me what’s good and what’s not good for the fucking babies!’ I can picture in my mind’s eye the veins that stand out on her neck when she loses her temper.

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat, because I haven’t got a leg to stand on. ‘But listen, Laura, she’s not here. I’ve scoured the whole ship. That’s why I had a drink, to celebrate her not following us.’

‘Well she doesn’t need to be on the ship now, does she? She knows where you’re going. She’s got the name of the ship! She’s got the name of the town! She’ll be on a plane now. If she’s not already there.’

We’ve never had a big argument over the phone before. I search for the right, calming words. ‘All the flights to the Faroes were booked months ago.’

‘No.’ She speaks with conviction. ‘There’s one chartered flight going from Inverness this evening that had, as of yesterday, two seats on it but that’s literally the only way to get there. And one of them’s already gone this morning, since you decided to declare your whereabouts.’

Anger takes the edge off my guilt. I’ve fucked up, but Laura hasn’t kept her side of the bargain either. She promised not to wind herself up, looking for trouble on the internet. She didn’t just stumble upon this while she was shopping for groceries or sending a work email. I can picture her sitting on the sofa, legs crossed under her bump, rising hysteria with every clickthrough. But I don’t say anything; I never do.

‘The chances of her being the one who booked that ticket are tiny.’

‘Yeah, well, the chances of her finding us in Zambia were pretty fucking remote, and she managed it then.’

‘That was different. We were at a festival, she was shooting fish in a barrel.’

There’s a crackly silence that lasts so long I have to check my phone for reception. Five full bars are lined up like tubular bells. She’s sulking. I don’t know how to do this long-distance. I wish I could touch her.

‘Laura, you’re overplaying the risks.’

‘But if she does find you?’

Then I’ll do whatever it takes to deal with her, I think, but I know that will only set Laura off again. ‘I tell you what,’ I say. ‘Let me have a look at the video first. I’ll call you back later, I promise.’

Back on deck, reassurances to Laura of my continued anonymity ring hollow as a fellow passenger, someone I don’t recognise, high-fives me and congratulates me on my ‘poem’.

Shit.

In the lobby I cocoon myself in my favourite chair, plug my earbuds into my phone and, with an uneasy churning deep inside, I go onto YouTube. It can only be Eclipse-chasing cruise. Drunk guy rapping on the Princess Celeste HILARIOUS. Silently vowing not to touch anything stronger than lemonade for the rest of the cruise, I tap to play. I didn’t think a person could blush with no one watching, but my cheeks fire as I look at my purple drunken face dribble and slur its way through a list – I would call it a monologue, rather than a rap or poem, but there you go – of all the eclipses I have witnessed since Chile ’91. If, in my drunken idiocy, I believed the cap an effective disguise, I was mistaken; it had by that point ridden up on to the top of my head, not even casting a shadow on my face. There are two saving graces, I suppose. The first is that my name tag was on my jumper, which I’d long cast off by the time of the performance, the second that my name isn’t mentioned at all, not even Christopher, let alone Kit. I’m introduced as ‘a fine gentleman and scholar’. The second is that my only concession to Cornwall ’99 is ‘Clouded out/twist and shout’, to boos all round. I’m not sure whether they’re sympathising for my bad meteorological luck or the terrible rhyme. I don’t, in fact, think it’s quite the security breach of Laura’s imagination, but there’s no denying I’m a massive dickhead.

A hand on my shoulder makes me jump in my seat.

‘You found Darren’s vlog, then?’ Richard drops into the chair opposite me. ‘He just told me about it. I was going to curl up and watch it now.’ I don’t know what my face does but Richard softens a little. ‘Ah, come on, you weren’t that pissed. It’s funny, it’s charming.’

‘I fucking hate technology,’ I say, head in my hands. ‘How is this even allowed?’

‘Cruise policy.’ Richard now looks sheepish. ‘I meant to tell you, didn’t I. When you got up to go for a slash?’

I think back to the front of the evening; he must mean when I was sneaking out to check the passenger list for Beth’s name. ‘They gave out stickers to anyone who objected to being filmed because so many camera crews were going to be around that they couldn’t get release forms for them all. Standard practice. You have to tell people, about photographs, that social media is part of it all.’