Nilsson hunched his head into his neck and walked stiffly to the door. He paused in the doorway for a moment, as if he was about to say something, but perhaps it was my face, or something in my eyes, because when he looked up and met my gaze, he seemed to flinch and turn away.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Miss—”

But I didn’t wait to hear any more. I slammed the door in his face and then flung myself on the bed to sob my heart out.

- CHAPTER 15 -

There’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow.

My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices.

But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself more how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.

Ben has seen me without makeup. And he walked away. I was angry for a long time, but in the end, I realized, I don’t blame him. The year I turned twenty-five was pretty bloody awful. If I could have walked away from myself, I would have.

But that didn’t excuse what he’d done now.

“Open up!”

The sound of laptop keys stopped, and I heard a chair scrape back. Then the cabin door opened cautiously.

“Yes?” Ben’s face filled the gap, his expression turning to surprise as he saw me. “Lo! What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?”

He had the grace to look slightly abashed at that.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. You spoke to Nilsson,” I said tightly.

“Look—” He put up a hand, placating, but I wasn’t to be soothed.

“Don’t look me. How could you, Ben? How long did it take you to spill all the beans—the breakdown, the meds, the fact that I almost lost my job—did you tell him all that? Did you tell him about the days I couldn’t get dressed, couldn’t leave the house?”

“No! Of course not. Christ, how could you think that?”

“Just the pills, then? And the fact that I was broken into, and a few other spicy details to give the idea that I’m definitely not to be trusted?”

“No! It wasn’t like that!” He walked to the veranda door and then turned to face me, running his hands through his hair so it stood on end. “I just— Shit, it all came out. I don’t know how. He’s good at his job.”

“You’re the journalist! What the hell happened to ‘No comment’?”

“No comment,” he groaned.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said. My hands were clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms, and I forced myself to unclench them, rubbing my aching palms on my jeans.

“What d’you mean? Look, hang on, I need a coffee. Want one?”

I wanted to tell him to sod off. But the truth was, I did want a coffee. I nodded curtly.

“Milk, no sugar, right?”

“Right.”

“Some things haven’t changed,” he said, as he filled the espresso machine with mineral water and slotted in a foil pod. I shot him a look.

“A hell of a lot has changed, and you know it. How could you tell him that stuff?”

“I’m— I don’t know.” He shoved his hands into his unruly hair again, gripping the roots as if he could somehow grasp an excuse out of his head if he pulled hard enough. “He ran into me on the way back from breakfast, stopped me in the corridor, and started saying he was concerned about you—stuff about noises in the night—I was hungover, I actually couldn’t really work out what he was on about. I thought he was talking about the break-in at first. Then he starts on about you being in a fragile state— Jesus, Lo, I’m sorry, it’s not like I went and knocked his door down desperate for a chat. What was he on about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I took the coffee he held out. It was too hot to drink, and I held it in my lap.

“It does. It’s clearly knocked you for six. Did something happen last night?”

About 95 percent of me wanted to tell Ben Howard to piss off, and that he had forfeited the right to my trust by blabbing about my private life and reliability as a witness to Nilsson. Unfortunately the remaining 5 percent seemed to be particularly forceful.

“I . . .” I swallowed against the ache in my throat, and the desire to tell someone what had happened. Maybe if I told Ben he could suggest something I’d not thought of? He was a reporter, after all. And, though it hurt to admit it, a pretty respected one.

I took a deep breath and then relayed the story I’d told Nilsson the night before, gabbling this time, desperate to make my case convincing.

“And the thing is she was there, Ben,” I finished. “You have to believe me!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Ben said. He blinked. “Of course I believe you.”

“You do?” I was so surprised, I put down the cup of coffee with a crack on the glass tabletop. “Really?”

“Of course I do. I’ve never known you to imagine anything.”

“Nilsson doesn’t.”

“I can see why Nilsson doesn’t want to believe you,” Ben said. “I mean, we all know that crime on cruise ships is a pretty murky area.”

I nodded. I knew as well as he did—as well as any travel journalist did—the rumors that abounded about cruise ships. It’s not that the owners are any more criminal than any other area of the travel industry, it’s just that there’s an inherent gray area surrounding crime committed at sea.

The Aurora wasn’t like some ships I’d written about, which were more like floating cities than boats, but it had the same contradictory legal status in international waters. Even in cases of well-documented disappearances, things get brushed under the carpet. Without a clear police jurisdiction to take control, the investigation is too often left to the onboard security services, who’re employed by the cruise liner and can’t afford to ruffle feathers, even if they wanted to.

I rubbed my arms, feeling suddenly cold, in spite of the fuggy warmth of the cabin. I’d gone in to Ben to bawl him out with the aim of making myself feel better. The last thing I expected was for him to back up my unease.

“The thing that worries me most . . .” I said slowly, then stopped.

“What?” Ben prompted.

“She . . . she lent me a mascara. That was how I met her—I didn’t know the cabin was empty, and I banged on the door to ask if I could borrow one.”

“Right . . .” Ben took another gulp of coffee. His face over the top of the cup was puzzled, clearly not seeing where this was leading. “And?”

“And . . . it’s gone.”

“What—the mascara? What d’you mean, gone?”

“It’s gone. It was taken out of my cabin while I was with Nilsson. Everything else I could almost write off—but if there’s nothing going on, why take the mascara? It was the only concrete thing I had to show that there was someone in that cabin, and now it’s gone.”

Ben got up and went to the veranda, pulling the gauze curtains shut, although it seemed an odd, unnecessary gesture. I had the strange, fleeting impression that he didn’t want to face me and was thinking about what to say.

Then he turned and sat back down on the end of the bed, his expression pure businesslike determination.