on reading their books as though she hadn’t spoken.
“I’m serious,” said Faye. “Math worksheets. Now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Domenica.
Yeah, yeah. Faye’s nostrils flared. Everything with that girl was “yeah, yeah.” As though now that she was fifteen she’d suddenly heard everything before.
“Yes, Mummy,” said Emma.
Faye heard an apology for her sister in the primness of her younger daughter’s response. As in, please don’t get mad right now. She wondered how much the girls had noticed the tension between her and Harold, and their not-always-coded conversations about the itinerary and planned ocean crossings. She could scarcely sleep from imagining their boat in a storm off the coast of Australia, foundering on the reefs, unable to call for help because Y2K had crippled their communication systems.
So she refrained from getting mad and biked to get groceries instead, while Harold checked the lines. Emma and Dom didn’t bother pretending to do their homework until their mother came back, by which point she didn’t care anymore either.
* * *
—
Later that evening, Emma and Domenica were confined to the cabin as Harold raised the anchor and Faye assisted him in casting off and motoring out of the harbour. In the galley, Domenica heated up a bean and pasta soup with buttered rolls for supper.
Emma could hear her father calling above deck: “Hoist the spinnaker on my call! I’m bringing her about.”
“Why are boats always girls?” she asked.
“Because captains are always men,” said Dom, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
As they moved out to sea, Emma used her spoon to tap on a floating piece of pasta that reminded her of Buona Fortuna with the wide, wild ocean beneath it. She took turns counting how many taps until the little shell submerged for good.
After they’d eaten, Emma sat poised in the salon with her pencil and her calculator, her workbook open on her lap and her eyes on the window. They had set off to make the crossing with reassurances of fair weather from both the satellite map and the forecast roundup they’d picked up off the SSB radio, but Emma could see dark clouds on the horizon signalling a squall.
Her father liked to say, “Buona Fortuna has already weathered more storms than we could ever face as a family.” She was made of steel and came from Holland, where she had first taken to the water on the blustery North Sea, proving herself to be a sailor well worth her salt. Emma knew every inch of her, from the chain locker in the bow, to the rigging at the top of the mizzen mast, down to the storage area below the cockpit. When Emma was very small, she had hidden there while playing hide-and-seek with Domenica during an ocean crossing. She still measured herself against the canny little boat nooks she used to squeeze into. Her mother called her a chipmunk, and her father joked that one day she’d get stuck and he would have to pull her out by the hair with his heavy-duty pliers.
As Emma watched, the cabin windows became painted with a film of raindrops. She turned on a reading light as the sky darkened, abandoning her math lesson to flip through a book about sea adventures. In every story the captain was a man, just as her sister had said. Dom was stretched out on the narrow salon couch with a vampire novel, having already given up all pretence of studying.
Although Domenica had described what regular school was like, Emma couldn’t imagine so many children assembled together in one place. Most of the other yachties they met were retired, or young couples without children. But there had been a few memorable friendships: Mireille, a red-headed girl from Nice whom she met in Sicily; Steph, from North London, with whom she had tried to speak to an enormous sea lion in the Galápagos; and Jacqui, whose parents had let her dye her hair purple and whose boat, Rain Dog, had been anchored next to Buona Fortuna in the Azores. These friendships had been both sanctified and spoiled by their fleetingness. Most alliances were created out of convenience, and Emma longed for a friend she could really choose and who would choose her. Her mother had promised that once they arrived in Australia, they would stay put long enough to enroll Emma and Domenica in regular classes, starting in January. This was what was going to sustain Emma during the days they would be anchored in New Caledonia, waiting out the storms that lay between