‘It’s getting me right in the mood,’ he broke off to say.
‘Please tell me I haven’t got a five-hour singalong to look forward to,’ Pete groaned.
‘Oh shut up moaning and drive, miseryguts,’ said Nigel, giddy as a schoolboy. He gasped then. ‘Oh heck, I hope Cora doesn’t turn up at the dock still expecting to come,’ he said and chuckled.
‘Haven’t you heard anything from her at all?’ asked Pete.
‘Not even a Christmas card. Ask me if I’m bothered.’
‘Are you bothered, Dad?’
‘No.’ He mused for a moment or two. ‘Looking back, she wasn’t very smiley, was she?’
‘She was a cheerless old crow, Dad. But it was your choice, not ours.’
‘You get lonely when you’ve had the company of a good woman for so many years, son. But being with the wrong partner is worse than being lonely, I’ve learned that if nothing else.’
Pete knew that already. He’d been lonely in his marriage; he and Tara would never have worked and were limping along towards a finish line, that he could easily see now with the vantage point of time. She’d been a whirlwind, blasting into his life, not giving him a chance to draw breath, needing him to stem her pain. Then he’d met Laurie, who had gently breathed hope and warmth into his aching heart. She was broken, like him, but somehow in that night they spent together, they had made each other complete. He wished her all the happiness in the world, wherever she was, whoever she was with. He also wished he’d had that conversation with Molly so much sooner, heard her sage advice about what he should have done instead of what he did do. He thought he was being kind to Laurie, but he hadn’t been. Not at all and it was no wonder she didn’t respond to an apology on a small card stuffed into a bunch of flowers.
‘The Northern Lights, la la la la. They will guide me back towards you,’ trilled Nigel at full volume.
If only they would, thought Pete.
*
Laurie sat on the bus listening to the driver talking down his microphone about all the safety features for the benefit of the new passengers who’d joined them at Leicester but she couldn’t concentrate. All she could think about was that she was the only person on here heading for Southampton who was not in a couple. Still that was preferable to being in a couple if the other half was Reid West-Hunt. She had a lot of time to think on that bus journey about the edge of the slippery slope she had been on with him, dissect how their relationship had evolved and – God forbid – what would have followed if she hadn’t got out when she had. She shuddered at the thought of him snooping through the drawers in her house, wondered what he’d been expecting to find, but she’d never been able to work out where he’d dredged up Pete’s name from. Anyway, she was on her way to Norway, away from him, she should think of him no more. She would let the cold, Arctic air sweep through her and tear out horrible memories and old sadnesses. Alex.
She hadn’t even told Bella that she never felt as if she was enough for Alex. He was a force of nature all of his own, as if imbued with more than his fair share of life, a walking flare of energy. He burned bright and quick, like a beautiful firework. He did love her, she knew, but not enough.
She wondered where Pete was, hoped he was happy, hoped he had found someone to love. Someone to love enough.
Chapter 60
‘I told you you’d be impressed,’ said Nigel, beaming as Pete took in the beautiful atrium of the Mermaidia en route to their port side cabin.
He was. It was bonkers how big this ship was and Pete was slightly bewildered how something this massive could actually float. It was more like a town than a boat. There was a welcoming bottle of champagne cooling in an ice bucket in their cabin when they got to it.
‘I ordered that to share with Cora, but I didn’t bother cancelling it,’ said Nigel, tearing the foil from the top, unscrewing the wire and popping the cork like a seasoned sommelier. He poured and handed a full flute to his son.
‘Here’s to the Aurora Borealis bringing us some luck. We are going to toast a new dawn,’ he said. ‘That’s what the Aurora means, you know – dawn.’
Pete clinked his glass against his father’s.
‘You don’t half talk a load of Borealis, Dad,’ he said.
*
When Laurie reached her starboard side cabin, her suitcase had already arrived and so she had started to unpack. As she hung up her long black dress, she decided that she wasn’t going to be a shrinking violet on this cruise, hiding in corners with a book or sitting in her cabin because she daren’t venture out. By the time the coach had pulled alongside the ship terminal, she’d already had a nice conversation with the people sitting behind her. If she met them on board, at least she’d have someone to say hello to. Judging from the size of the ship, though, she wondered what the likelihood was of bumping into them again. It was enormous. And beautiful. And she had a cabin steward called Paul who would make her bed, leave chocolates on her pillow and give her fresh towels every day. She was going to enjoy every one of those pounds this holiday had cost, she decided.
There was a ship’s newspaper, Mermaidia Today, waiting on her bed with details of all the events happening on board tonight and tomorrow. A theatre show might be nice, she could be anonymous there. She’d booked to have dinner every night at 6.30 p.m., on a table of eight: hopefully, nice friendly people, because that’s what Alan Robertson had advised her to do. He went cruising with his wife because he liked the fact there was no internet or signal in the middle of the sea and so very little chance to get hold of him when things went wrong back at Trumpet HQ. He wouldn’t have picked that way of travelling otherwise, he said. He might have been tempted to throw himself off the top deck as soon as his phone rang.
She had just finished unpacking when a tannoy call alerted her to attend a life-jacket meeting at her allocated muster station. Alan told her that he and his wife offset the monotony of those by ‘watching out for the knobheads who disobeyed all the instructions and thought they knew better than the crew’. She bet a cruise with the grumpy old sod would have been fun.
*
After the meeting, Laurie went out on deck to watch the sailaway. She exchanged the voucher that had been left in her welcome pack for a glass of fizz from a waiter circulating with a tray of them, and stood in the freezing February air with lots of wrapped-up fellow passengers already in holiday mode. The engines rumbled and the water below began to churn and to cheers and whistles and to the music of a band playing outside the terminal building, the ship began to push away from the dockside. They were off, nosing into the chilled dark; she felt a hit of excitement and trepidation, and then a slap of sadness that came at speed from left field. She thought she was going to be making this trip as a new bride, not a dumpee. Now stop that, said a stern voice inside. You are holidaying as an independent woman, a lone passenger free to go where you want and do what you want. It was the sort of thing she could imagine Alex saying to her, if they’d split up and remained friends. Would they have been able to do that, she wondered, before shaking him away, letting him drift back to England on the current. She wouldn’t take him with her any more.
*
‘Are we supposed to dress for dinner?’ asked Pete, holding up a suit in one hand and a polo shirt in the other.