Katie Fforde - Going Dutch

‘I'll make it,' said Dora, sensing Jo's reluctance to go back down below so soon.

‘I'm sure Carole's quite capable of making her own tea,' said Marcus, disentangling Carole's arms from around his waist.

‘Oh, Marky!' Carole's reproachful eyes gazed up at him. 'Don't bother. I'll do it,' said Dora. 'I might find a biscuit.'

‘Oh, biscuits. Now you're talking,' said Tom.

‘Biscuits have hydrogenated fat in them,' said Carole. 'Not these, I checked,' said Jo and then hated herself for sounding smug.

‘It's a lovely day,' said Carole. 'I slept really well in that bunk.’

Jo waited for her to thank her for giving it up for them but then decided life was too short to wait that long.

‘I'm going to get my shorts on and top up my tan,' Carole went on.

‘But it's still a bit chilly, isn't it?' Why do I have to treat everyone as if I was their mother? Jo chided herself. Why would she care if Carole got cold? Carole sprang back down to her cabin a few moments before Dora arrived with the tea. Dora knocked on the door. 'Do you want me to bring it down there?'

‘Oh. No thanks. I've just had some water. I'll be fine,' Carole called up.

‘There's a spare cup of tea,' said Dora, showing, Jo thought, remarkable restraint.

‘Ed will drink it,' said Marcus.

‘I'll go and put sugar in it,' said Dora.

‘I'll do it!' offered Jo, who didn't want to be left alone with Marcus. She still felt odd about him and didn't want to have to analyse why just yet.

‘No, you stay up here.' Dora was firm and beginning to treat Jo much like Karen did.

Rather than make stilted conversation, Jo speculated on how Carole could be so completely self-centred when it came to everyone else, and yet be so devoted to Marcus and his comfort. Love, she supposed, had a lot to answer for.

About ten minutes later, Carole appeared in a canary-yellow bikini designed to reveal a maximum amount of flesh and to prove the myth that some women's legs went from waist to feet without any connecting hips. She was carrying a large beach bag.

‘You don't need anything, Marky?' she asked him as she passed by. 'I'll just be out there if you do, but I'm sure Jo or Dora will get you anything you want.’

Having made this announcement, she climbed up on deck. Before everyone's fascinated gaze, especially Tom's, Dora noted, she laid out a huge beach towel and sat on it. Then she produced a sunhat, sunglasses and several bottles of suncream. She applied the cream in a thick layer,rendering the surface of her skin almost white, and then rested her head on a life belt. But only for a moment.

‘This is a bit hard, can you throw me a cushion?' she called.

Jo and Dora both leapt to obey but Dora got there first. 'Why don't you do a little sunbathing?' Jo suggested to her, 'if you're going out there anyway?'

‘I haven't got anything suitable to wear,' Dora said. 'I left my dental floss in the bathroom.’

Tom and Marcus shot her confused glances and Jo frowned. 'Well, just get a bit of sun while you can,' she said firmly. She didn't think it was fair to make disparaging remarks about Marcus's girlfriend in front of him. Especially when he didn't understand the reference.

‘I wonder if Ed would like another cup of tea?' said Jo rhetorically and went off to make one, in spite of hearing Tom's protest that he'd been given one only moments before.

Jo decided that Ed would be her source of information. She would have used Tom, but he was in the wheelhouse, steering, and Marcus was with him, making sure he could do it, she presumed. Ed obligingly drained his mug and took the full one that Jo offered.

‘So, what's going on, Ed? I don't want to distract Tom.’

‘It looks like he's making a good job of steering. Marcus will be pleased.'

‘Tell me where we are, and everything.' Jo felt she could reveal her ignorance to Ed without being embarrassed. 'You've watched the Boat Race on telly, have you?' Jo nodded.

‘Well, we'll pass the same landmarks, Harrods Depository, all the bridges. We'll be down in Westminster in a couple of hours, that's where we'll get fuel. It's grand seeing the houses of parliament from the water.'

‘Goodness me! Now that does sound exciting,' said Jo, still teetering between the near-phobic stay-at-home she had been before and the slightly more confident seafarer Marcus had made her. On reflection, it did explain why Marcus had been so off with her. If he'd really thought that she'd chickened out when he'd gone out of his way to make her feel less terrified – well, it would have made anyone grumpy, especially a man used to getting his own way. And he was disturbingly attractive.

Ed was unaware of Jo's little revelation. 'You'll get used to being on the go,' he said. 'Although it must be a bit strange when your home just casts off and moves.'

‘It is! It's unsettling for someone like me who hasn't done much travelling, or anything. I got married too young,' she added, speaking her thoughts.

‘It's never too late to catch up. Young Tom was telling me how he plans to go travelling. Now, a handy person like him could get a lot of work as boat crew. I reckon that'd be a grand life for a youngster. I got married young too,' he added. 'Although I went to sea and everything, I always had a wife and family to support. I've got lots of grand children now.'

‘Oh, that's nice.'

‘It is. I don't envy Marcus,' he lowered his voice somewhat, but not, Jo thought, quite enough. 'That Carole takes a lot of upkeep, I reckon.'

‘Have they been together long?' Jo almost whispered. 'He doesn't usually bring her on trips, so I don't know.’

‘Oh.'

‘He doesn't really like women being on board at all. He says they panic and get in the way. Maybe because you and Dora had to be here, he thought Carole would be -company.'

‘I see.' Jo didn't know quite how to take this. Why, whenhe'd never felt the need of Carole on a trip before, did he decide to bring her this time? To warn her off perhaps? But he'd thought she wasn't coming. 'I wonder what time Marcus thinks we should have lunch?' she went on, saying the first safe thing she could think of.

Ed grinned. 'It's not ten o'clock yet. You weren't planning on doing a roast, were you?’

Jo laughed. 'No. Home-made pizza, brown rolls, cheese, salad. Tom said that's all anyone would want.'

‘Home-made pizza sounds grand to me. But not for a few hours yet.’

They'd taken on fuel and had set off again when Dora told Jo that the pizza should be served cold.

‘Heating it will make it go all floppy, and it's a lovely day. We don't need warming up, nor does the pizza. Carole will have salad on its own, I expect.'

‘Oh?'

‘We were chatting. She doesn't do dairy and has a wheat allergy.'

‘I wish Marcus had told me she was coming!'

‘She said that she gets annoyed when people take nut allergies really seriously, but think that wheat allergies are just faddiness.'

‘That does seem unfair.' Jo was frantically trying to think how to keep Carole alive over the next few days. Fortunately she was so slender she probably wouldn't need a lot.

‘I told her that having an allergy to nuts was really dangerous, just a sniff of one and you could die. I don't think the effect is quite so dramatic with wheat.'

‘I don't know,' said Jo. 'I just hope she doesn't have a problem with citrus. Fruit is about all she's going to be able to eat.'

‘1 think it's people with arthritis who should avoid citrus,' said Dora. 'I don't suppose Carole qualifies.'

‘I wouldn't mind, really I wouldn't. I want people to be happy, to have what they like to eat…' Jo lowered her voice, although they were in the galley and couldn't be heard on deck. 'But why isn't she down here telling us what she needs? Why do we have to second-guess all the time?'