S.O.S. by Joseph Connolly Read Free Book Online Page A

about it often enough, oh heavens yes (we talked about anything that would use up time), but this year we decided to go for it (and you should have heard Ed and Fanny on
that
one) – six days and nights to New York … a doublefirst for us, really, because neither one of us had even been to America, let alone New York. We didn’t care for long-haul flights, that’s the truth of the matter (what it really boiled down to), and here was the perfect solution: plus, of course, a week was eaten up just in the getting there. And then, you see – and this is how our thinking went – if we both liked it (and why would we not?) then next year we could book up for the fully-fledged World Cruise, see just everywhere we’ve ever read about, or glimpsed on the telly. Australia, Hong Kong, Barbados, you name it. Expensive, oh yes very – or it is, anyway, if you want to do it in any way
properly:
no point travelling the world, is there, on some mighty ship if you’re going to be stuck six decks down, cheek by jowl with the boiler room? Also, this one would be taking care of four clear months: you can see the attraction.
    And then … it happened. And among the very many (endless) things that hurtled into me and laid siege to my thoughts – and how quiet now the house is, in which to think them – was the question of what to do about the booking. I could have cancelled – could easily have done that (there’s a clause in my insurance: my cover, as you will appreciate, is always both in order and more than adequate) and I suppose this was my initial inclination. And then I thought, well … the time looms larger than ever, now – and maybe, because dear Mary is with me always, I can still (why not?) take her with me. Because where Tom goes, Mary goes – yes? So why not do this one last thing together? See? So here, in this car, in a sense we both are.
    We’re moving again. Making a fair bit of progress, now. The ship’s so close, I can’t honestly see any of it at all: it’s just like a wall, with us in our cars so small and crouching, maybe awed by the darkness of its shadow.
    *
    â€˜Oh … my …
God
…’ came young Rollo’s look-at-me descant – but his mother was certainly far too preoccupied to pay any heed whatever to
that
sort of thing.
    They had all, the four of them, been standing in line in this vast and rather loweringly spartan embarkation hall for, yes, just a teeny weeny bit longer than Nicole thought was fitting for the family that had, after all, won through to be the sole captors of the fabulous no-expense-spared Trip of a Lifetime (thanks in no little way, I like to think, to my tiebreaking seventeen words which I’ll happily tell you about later but not just now because I want us to be
settled
).
    Nicole had rather supposed that they might have been, well – piped aboard, maybe, and warmly welcomed by one or two of the shipping line’s senior directors, or possibly even the Captain himself, or something, but so far not even so much as a paid-by-the-grin meeter and greeter had seen fit to show his face – but OK, yes, she was certainly gratified to discover that the very queue in which they were standing conferred on them at least a
modicum
of status. The whole elaborate checking-in system, it rather oddly seemed, was organized according to the class of onboard
restaurant
, of all things, to which your ticket entitled you; the longest queues all down the other end, then, must be for the rather lowlier eating places and bars, Nicole could only assume –
some
comfort, anyway – and presumably all these poor people (didn’t, admittedly,
look
terribly poor) were going to be, what, stuck in with the cargo, or something, were they? Dangling from hammocks.
    â€˜Check … it …
out
,’ persisted Rollo. ‘Mar? Get
this
…’
    Marianne