‘Oh.’ Fen was taken aback. ‘When did you… I mean, why didn’t you tell me?’ She pulled his overcoat tighter around her.
‘I am,’ he paused, finally looking back up at her. ‘I’m sorry, it was cowardly of me, but I knew how desperate you were to go home and I’m simply not ready.’
Fen thought he looked like a naughty schoolboy, with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets and his head drooped. She was about to ask him some more questions when there was a noise behind them and Eloise ran down the deck, shrieking with laughter. It broke the tension between Fen and James, and he looked at her again.
‘No shouting? Am I going to get a clip round the ear?’
Fen gave him a withering look when Eloise ran past them again, and then doubled back to join them. She leant over, resting her hands on her thighs as she caught her breath.
‘You don’t know how good that feels, just running.’ She grinned at them both. ‘I used to do track when I was at high school. Lord, how I’ve missed it, being cooped up in that château. Go on, Fen, try it.’
‘I’m fine, really.’ Fen indicated how shrouded she was in James’s large overcoat. ‘I’d probably trip and fall overboard.’
‘Nonsense.’ Eloise started tugging the massive coat off her and Fen gave in and helped shrug it off her shoulders. ‘Come on, race you to the shuffleboard court and back. Go!’
Eloise ran off at pace and Fen took a moment to realise that she needed to pelt her way down the deck after her.
‘Go on,’ James nudged her. ‘Can’t let America win all the medals.’
‘Fine!’ Fen clutched her long string of pearls in the same hand as her old brooch so that they wouldn’t swing from side to side as she hit her stride along the deck.
With a head start like that, Eloise was already turning back and racing towards Fen, whooping as she went. Instead of running past her, she stuck out her arms and ran into Fen, enveloping her in a hug and then pulling her along in her direction. ‘It’s much more fun to run together! Come on!’
Fen kept up with Eloise as they rounded the end of the deck, where another shuffleboard court was painted onto the wooden boards, illuminated now by great spotlights that reflected off the glistening wet boards. Fen had no time to admire the recreational facilities, however, as Eloise pulled her around the deck, whooping as she upped the pace when they hit the straight of one of the sheltered promenade decks.
The moonlight shone down on them as they passed portholes, some dark, others glowing with soft light through the curtains, which, as often as not, twitched as the thunderous sound of runners pounded past them. The promenade deck gave way to a larger open space and Fen caught sight of a diving board and covered swimming pool, again bathed in the light of the deck’s spotlights.
Eloise caught her sleeve again and pulled her along the very edge of the deck. Finally, panting, they both came to a stop, laughing and gasping for air. Their exhilaration at the exercise was only matched by a long, sonorous blast from the foghorn, the bass note of it filling their stomachs with tremors.
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Eloise shouted, out to the sea as much as to Fen. ‘I feel so alive! And free! For the first time in years, I feel free!’
Fen was still getting her breath back, not used to sprinting around at such pace, but she laughed as she clutched her side.
‘Come on, Fen, shout it out, too,’ Eloise coaxed. ‘Say “I’m free! I’m Fenella Churche and I’m free!”’
‘I’m free!’ Fen spoke it loudly, but not loudly enough for Eloise.
‘Louder!’
‘I’m free!’
Eloise gestured for more volume.
Fen took a deep breath and tried again, this time with some real emphasis. ‘I’m free!’
‘That’s more like it!’ Eloise clapped her on the back. ‘Now tell me that doesn’t feel good. No, not good, that feels great, doesn’t it?’
‘It does, it does.’ Fen laughed, and accepted a hug from her new, exuberant friend.
‘Now, race you back to his lordship?’ Eloise winked at her and slipped out of their embrace to get another head start down the deck.
‘Oh, bother!’ Fen grabbed her pearls again and took off after Eloise, catching her up slightly but coming in second as they reached James, who was staring pensively over the deck as they reached him.
After they got their breath back once again, Eloise turned to Fen and said more seriously, ‘See, you have to stay and be my friend. Else I might run right over the side of the deck.’
James laughed but said nothing.
Eloise continued, ‘Please though, Fen, I haven’t had a friend to talk to for five, no six, long years. And those aren’t normal years, they were war years, with only Aunt M for company…’ She looked imploringly at Fen. ‘I’d love to have a friend for the journey. Please?’
‘I… I…’ Fen’s heart was pumping and the blood was thundering through her ears. Was she sober enough to make this decision, or was it pure adrenaline that was flowing through her veins now? Eloise had been right, for that moment as she shouted out those words over the bow of the ship, Fen had felt free. Free for a moment from the grief and sorrow she’d been carrying with her for all those months since she’d received Arthur’s last letter, free from the sadness that had overwhelmed her in Paris as she’d investigated her friend’s death… just free. ‘Yes, yes. All right then. I will.’
‘Wonderful!’ Eloise clapped her hands together. ‘Aunt M will pay, of course. She’s been on at me to spend more time with appropriate people and she obviously warmed to you.’
‘If that was warm…’ James chuckled, and Fen and Eloise simultaneously told him off.
‘How rude,’ they both said at the same time and laughed. That sealed the
