CHAPTER 1

Position: Barbados

Weather: Fine and Dry. Wind: South Easterly Force 4. Temperature: 26°. Barometric Pressure: 1014.9mb

‘There’s a calypso band on the quayside.’ Mia leaned further over the ship’s rail and peered into the dusky light below before straightening up again and turning to face her sister. ‘I think they’re supposed to be serenading us.’ She pushed her tawny curls out of sparkling green eyes which danced with amusement. ‘I’ve never been serenaded before.’

‘Neither have I,’ admitted Britt whose glance flickered towards the band and then back across the docks and towards the yellow and white lights which were beginning to dot the landscape beyond. ‘I guess serenading is a little bit old fashioned these days.’

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful though,’ said Mia, ‘if a guy actually did that? Stood underneath your window in the moonlight, a single rose in his hand and sang about everlasting love. It’d be so romantic, don’t you think?’

‘Any guy hanging around beneath my window warbling in the middle of the night would find himself in policy custody pretty damn quick,’ Britt told her firmly. ‘I don’t want my beauty sleep interrupted by a karaoke reject thanks very much. Anyway it would probably be just a diversionary tactic on his part to distract me while his burglar mate nipped in around the back and made off with the TV or something.’

‘Britt McDonagh!’ Mia’s tone was one of scandalised humour. ‘How can you say something like that? You of all people!’

‘Of all people?’ Britt grinned. ‘Of all people I’m clearly the most qualified on board this ship to say what is totally cheesy when it comes to romantic gestures. And someone mangling Nessun Dorma or Three Times a Lady outside my two-bed terraced would be fighting for the number one spot.’ She shuddered suddenly. ‘I have a horrible feeling that this entire voyage is going to be full of cheesy moments and I really and truly am beginning to think that it was a mistake to even consider it.’

A worried expression crossed Mia’s face. ‘Don’t say that,’ she protested. ‘It’s the trip of a lifetime. You know it is.’

‘No it bloody isn’t,’ responded Britt firmly. ‘I can tell you here and now that if I was picking my trip of a lifetime spending the best part of a fortnight on this floating love palace wouldn’t be it.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Mia persuasively. ‘It’s fantastic. You know it is. And you know that we’re going to have a great time too. How can we not?’

Britt said nothing but turned from the rail and sat down on one of the comfortable deck chairs while Mia’s eyes followed her anxiously. It wouldn’t do, she told herself, for Britt to start having doubts about the trip again. She thought that her sister had dealt with all that before now. Mia knew that Britt wasn’t exactly thrilled about her role on the journey ahead of them but she’d been hoping that her sister had managed to convince herself that everything was going to be OK.

Mia was perfectly prepared to concede that joining the exclusive MV Aphrodite for its romance-laden Valentine Cruise was probably not exactly the voyage either of them would have booked for themselves as the trip of a lifetime – even if they’d had the appropriate boyfriend to take with them and thus be part of the whole loved-up experience – but the fact was that they were still going to spend almost two weeks sailing in tropical seas on board one of the world’s most exclusive cruise liners which had to be a good thing.

And it was because of Britt that they were staying in the amazing suite with its private balcony as (almost) pampered passengers and not prepping food in the galley or sluicing out the loos as would have been far more likely – at least in her case – otherwise. So it absolutely wouldn’t do for Britt to get an attack of nerves again now. Besides, it was Mia’s job to make sure that she didn’t. The only problem was that she wasn’t entirely sure she was qualified enough to carry it out.

Earlier on, when they’d first boarded the Aphrodite (smaller than the average cruise ship because it was supposed to offer passengers a more intimate at-sea experience but still enormous in her eyes) Mia had remarked that she could see why the brochures billed it as the holiday of a lifetime. And Britt had looked at her with a suddenly stern expression on her heart-shaped face and reminded her that neither of them were there on holiday, they were there to work. And that she wasn’t to forget it.

How could she forget it, thought Mia, pushing her river of curls out of her face again. Britt reminded her of it often enough. But even though she might want to call it work, surely a fortnight of island hopping, even if you did have to spend half of it delivering workshops and lectures in Britt’s case or, in Mia’s making sure everything was exactly right for her perfectionist sister, was a million times better than spending it in Dublin in what had turned out to be the wettest February on record. And despite the fact that Mia herself hadn’t been in the gloom of Dublin, but had been working in Spain where it was dry although not yet particularly warm at the time the call from Britt had come, the carrot of a trip that meant travelling from the Caribbean to the Pacific and calling in to Guatemala (where she’d first met Alejo) was too good to pass up no matter how many times she asked herself whether she was doing the right thing by going.

She concentrated on the calypso band in their brightly coloured shirts and white shorts on the quayside below and very firmly pushed Alejo out of her mind. She wanted to visit Guatemala again because she’d spent a wonderful few months there four years ago and because she’d loved the country and its people. She didn’t want it to be some kind of homage to her foolish past. Or to Alejo. She couldn’t exactly forget the past of course, but perhaps she could use this opportunity to put it into context. Visiting Guatemala, she assured herself, would bring closure to that time in her life. It needed closure. She sighed imperceptibly. Being ruthlessly honest with herself despite what she knew she needed, she wasn’t exactly sure that she wanted closure on it at all.

A motorised buggy, precariously piled with a mountain of luggage, zipped along the quay and stopped at the side of the ship where the bags were placed on a ramp leading into its hold. Two ship’s officers paced up and down alongside. Mia’s eyes followed them as they oversaw operations and she couldn’t help thinking that crisp white uniforms had a lot to recommend them. She whistled the theme tune to An Officer and a Gentleman under her breath. She’d only been four when the movie was released but it had been one of her mum’s favourites and, due to the amount of times she and Paula had watched it together, it had become one of her favourites too. Mia had always agreed with her mum that nobody could look as good as Richard Gere in a white uniform. But now she conceded that she might be wrong. The young officer shepherding the final passengers towards the gangway appeared, even from a distance, very hunky indeed. She wondered fleetingly if the ship’s crew were allowed to get into the spirit of the Valentine Cruise. She liked the idea of being romanced by a man in uniform even if he didn’t have a calypso band to serenade her.

She closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself to think of being swept off her feet by an officer. And then she opened them again and told herself not to be so bloody silly. Whatever else was on the cards for the next two weeks, Valentine Cruise or not, it certainly wasn’t romance. At least not personally. Any romantic moments that came her way would be entirely due to the job she was there to do. Besides, she wasn’t in the market for being swept off her feet. She’d learned her lesson the hard way.

The final passengers began to board the ship, stopping at the bottom of the gangway to have their photographs taken in the pink and gold light of the sunset by the pretty young ship’s photographer who was making sure that they looked happy and excited despite the fact that it had been a long day and most of them were exhausted. She’d just removed her camera from around her neck and begun to walk towards a group of her colleagues when one more passenger strode swiftly across the quayside, hesitated very briefly and then, before she had the chance to take his photograph, hurried up the gangway leaving her standing looking after him in consternation and holding the camera in her hands.

The photographer hadn’t been there when Britt and Mia had arrived and so neither of them had had their embarkation photos taken. They’d caught a scheduled flight which had left London early that morning rather than travelling on the Blue Lagoon Cruise Company’s chartered plane later in the day. Their earlier departure had meant they’d boarded the ship before anyone else and before the photographer had taken up her position at the gangway. Mia supposed that it was a good thing that they hadn’t had to pose for a photo with a massive cut-out heart as a backdrop. She was pretty certain that she couldn’t have persuaded Britt to agree to it anyhow.

The scheduled flight had been courtesy of the cruise company and at the insistence of Britt’s needle-sharp agent, Meredith, who had originally intended to accompany Britt on the trip and for whom ‘economy’ was a forbidden word. And although Mia was as excited as anything about the cruise ahead of them and had to keep reminding herself that it was real and that she was actually here, she couldn’t help feeling deep down that it might have been better for everyone concerned if Meredith had been able to come as planned. As it was she had to keep telling herself that on this voyage she wasn’t Britt’s hopeless younger sister. She was her assistant, her paid assistant and so a professional person, and she also had to remember – hugely difficult though it might be – that her sister wasn’t plain old Bridget McDonagh any more. She was Brigitte Martin, author of The Perfect Man, the heart-breaking romantic novel that had spent the last six months at the top of the international bestseller lists and was now about to be a major motion picture starring two Oscar winners and an Oscar nominee. As a result Britt (somewhat unbelievably in Mia’s opinion, given that her sister was probably the least romantic person she’d ever known and had, after all, divorced her husband after less than a year of marriage) was now seen as a kind of authority on love and romance as well as being an award winning novelist, and was in massive demand to appear on talk shows and at literary events to discuss the nature of love and talk about her life as the writer of the most romantic book of the year. This demand, Mia knew, escalated every time Britt said no to appearing on anything. And Britt said no quite a lot which Mia was certain drove Meredith to despair. Mia – who loved chat shows and eagerly watched them all so that she could keep up with the latest showbiz gossip – couldn’t quite understand how Britt could keep refusing to appear on them. Mia loved Jonathan Ross and Ryan Tubridy and even Podge & Rodge’s anarchic show, but Britt insisted that she had no intention of discussing her life with anyone or being mocked by two wooden puppets on television. Eventually, however, she’d caved and appeared on the Late Late on RTÉ but that was because Paula had been horrified at the idea of her daughter refusing to appear on the nation’s longest-running chat show and had badgered Britt incessantly until she’d finally given in. Paula could wear Britt down more effectively than Meredith. She wanted the trip up to Dublin, she told Britt firmly, and she wouldn’t be denied a great night out just because Britt was being silly about it. Paula had eventually triumphed and afterwards had raved about the evening to Mia, saying that Britt had been amazing and brilliant and an absolute natural. She’d sent Mia a DVD of the show and Mia had been astonished to see that Paula was absolutely right.

The most amazing of all, Mia thought, was the transformation of her sister’s fashion look from the black suit and white blouse ensembles which she’d almost invariably worn over the past ten years to the astonishingly pretty woman with sleek curls and a colourful dress who was laughing and joking with the audience. It had been a long time since Mia had seen Britt laugh and joke like that and she’d begun to wonder whether writing the book had actually been a welcome turning point in her sister’s life. But it hadn’t. Paula had told her that as soon as the programme was over Britt refused to hang around and chat with the celebs but had insisted that she was tired and wanted to go home where she’d immediately removed the make-up and brushed the curls out of her hair. And, Paula had added, Britt had said that the whole thing had been a huge strain and that she hoped she’d never have to do it again.

It was typical of Britt, Mia thought, that she’d managed to be so successful on the show even though she hadn’t wanted to do it. She knew that in the same circumstances she’d have been tongue-tied and useless. But, she conceded, Britt was annoyingly good at most things – especially things she didn’t like doing. She’d once told Mia that it was easy to be good at stuff you enjoyed. Being good at stuff you hated was a much greater challenge. (Mia had been doing her maths homework at the time and it hadn’t been going particularly well. Unlike Britt, she was terrible at doing things she hated!)