“Are you still undergoing treatment?” I asked. She shook her head, the soft silk scarf around her skull rustling as she did.
“Not at the moment. I’ve finished my last round of chemotherapy, for the moment, anyway. I’ll undergo radiotherapy when we get back, and then I suppose we’ll see.”
“Well, best of luck,” I said, and then winced at the way the innocent remark seemed to make her survival into a kind of game of chance. “And, um, thanks,” I finished.
“No problem at all.”
She shut the door and I turned to walk back towards the stairs to the upper deck, feeling my face burn with a kind of shame.
I had never been to the hot tub, but I knew where it should be—on the top deck above the Lindgren Lounge, just outside the spa. I made my way up the thickly carpeted stairs towards the restaurant deck, expecting that feeling of light and space that I’d had before—but I’d forgotten the sea mist. When I got to the door that opened onto the deck, a wall of gray greeted me behind the glass, blanketing the ship in its folds so you could barely see from one end of the deck to the other, giving a strange, muffled feeling.
The mist had brought a chill to the air, fogging the hairs on my arms with drizzle, and as I stood uncertainly in the lee of the doorway, shivering and trying to get my bearings, I heard the long, mournful boom of a fog horn.
The whiteness made everything seem unfamiliar, and it took me a few minutes to work out where the stairs to the top deck were, but eventually I realized they must be to my right, further up towards the prow of the boat. I couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying a Jacuzzi in this weather, and for a moment I wondered if Anne Bullmer had been mistaken. But as I rounded the glassed-in tip of the restaurant I heard laughter and looked up to see lights glowing in the mist above my head, coming from the deck above. Seemingly there were people mad enough to strip down, even in this cold.
I wished I’d brought a coat, but there was no sense going back for one, so I wrapped my arms around myself and climbed the slippery vertiginous steps to the upper deck, following the sound of voices and laughter.
There was a glass screen halfway along the deck, and when I slipped round it, there they were—Lars, Chloe, Richard Bullmer, and Cole, seated around the edge of the most enormous Jacuzzi I’d ever seen. It must have been eight or ten feet across, and they were leaning back against the sides, with just their shoulders and heads showing, the steam rising so densely from the bubbling water that it was hard for a moment to see who was in there.
“Miss Blacklock!” Richard Bullmer called heartily, his voice carrying easily above the roaring of the jets. “Have you recovered from last night?”
He stuck out a tanned, muscular arm, steaming and goose-bumped in the cold air, and I shook his dripping hand and then wrapped my arms back around myself, feeling the warmth of his grip fade immediately and the chill of the wind on my now-damp hands.
“Come for a dip?” Chloe asked with a laugh, waving an inviting hand at the rolling cauldron of bubbles.
“Thanks”—I shook my head, trying not to shudder—“but it’s a bit cold.”
“It’s warmer in here, I can tell you!” Bullmer gave a wink. “Hot Jacuzzi, cold shower”—he indicated an open-sided shower to one side of the Jacuzzi, a vast rainwater shower rose poised above the tray. There was no temperature control, just a steel push button with a blue center, and the sight made me shudder involuntarily—“and then straight into the sauna,” he finished, jerking a thumb at a wooden cabin tucked behind the glass screen. Craning my head round I could see a glass door streaming with condensation, and through the trickling runnels, the red glow of a brazier. “Then rinse and repeat as many times as your heart can stand it.”
“It’s not really my cup of tea,” I said awkwardly.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Cole said. He grinned, showing his pointed incisors. “I have to say, jumping out of the sauna into the cold shower was a pretty incredible experience. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”
I flinched.
“Thanks, but I think I won’t.”
“Suit yourself.” Chloe smiled. She stretched out a