A year or so ago, Mac had told Ella that his friend Dave only had sex with his wife half a dozen times in a year. “Let’s never let that happen to us,” he’d said, with what Ella had read as gratitude.

  The strangest part was that, even knowing what she knew, it didn’t feel real. She’d always heard that when women discovered this kind of thing, everything clicked into place. The secrecy. The late nights. The change in moods or sudden withdrawal. But Ella hadn’t noticed Mac pulling away. He’d always worked long hours, but no more recently than usual. Aside from the odd medical conference or dinner and a weekly Pilates class that Ella had recently signed him up for, he went to work and came home. If they socialised, they did it together, with the same people they’d socialised with for ten years.

  She had so many questions. How did it happen? Why did this happen? How long did it last?

  Perhaps most importantly, what had Ella misunderstood so wildly about their relationship that allowed her to miss this?

  “Here,” Chloe said, handing Ella a glass of ice water. A steward appeared at the same time with an umbrella, which he erected above Ella, shielding her from the hot afternoon sun. “Drink.”

  In the shade of the umbrella, it came to her. The information she needed was right in front of her. Ella lifted the glass to her lips and took a deep sip.

  “Better?” Chloe asked.

  “No,” Ella said. “But I will be.”

  The chili-lime margaritas had a lot to answer for. By the end of dinner—fresh oysters, followed by seabass and sautéed baby squid with capers, olives, and saffron aioli—Stephanie and Vanessa had twice sung the national anthem, Karl had the hiccups, Meera was too drunk to offer a strong opinion on anything, and Jonathan was slurring every second word. Chloe had only had two cocktails, and though she wasn’t slurring her words, even she seemed merry. Finally, under duress, Ella had accepted a cocktail herself, but so far, she’d had only a couple of sips.

  It wasn’t difficult for Ella to ensure that she was sitting next to Chloe at dinner. Chloe had saved her a seat. It would have been sweet, had she not been an adulteress.

  “So, how did you meet your married guy?” Ella asked as the plates were collected.

  It wasn’t entirely out of left field. Earlier in the evening, when the other guests were still able to communicate, conversation had travelled to Stephanie’s cancer treatment, Vanessa’s divorce, Magnus’s estrangement from his mother when he came out as gay (and their subsequent reconciliation). In light of this, and the fact that Chloe had offered this information on the first day, Ella got the feeling that anything was fair game.

  Indeed, Chloe didn’t seem suspicious. “He took my Pilates class on a Monday night.”

  Ella thought of the reformer Pilates pass she had bought for Mac last Christmas. Six months ago, she’d reprimanded him for not using it. Knowing that was unlikely to prompt him, she’d signed him up for his first class. It was on a Monday night. He’d booked the rest of his classes himself. He enjoyed it more than he expected, he’d said.

  “He was the only guy in the class, which made him the butt of a lot of jokes,” Chloe continued. “After class, we often go for a tea or coffee, so I asked him to join us. Turned out we were the only two. We got along famously. He wasn’t wearing a wedding band.”

  He never has, Ella almost said. She’d had a few more sips of her cocktail, and she was losing track of what she could say and what she couldn’t.

  Mac had never worn a wedding band. His father never had, nor had Ella’s, and she’d never thought to question it. Why would she? Mac had always been so proud of being married. Loved talking about “the Mrs.,” the “ball and chain,” and “the other half.” How could he have done this?

  “It was just coffee, that day. Thirty minutes. But . . . I don’t know. He was just so damn charming. He seemed like . . . such a nice guy, you know?”

  I do, Ella thought.

  “He paid for the coffees, so I said I’d get them next time. Then I suggested we make it a glass of wine. It happened bit by bit. I thought that boded well.”

  In her peripheral vision, Ella noticed that Stephanie was slow dancing with one of the stewards. Meera was shouting at another one to put on some music. It felt so shocking to her that the world was just going on—that people were dancing—while she was hearing the details of her beloved husband’s infidelity.

  “The stupid thing was . . . I saw a future with him. I told my family about him!” Chloe sounded drunk now, and a little teary. “It was stupid, because it had only been a short time. But I was head over heels. I thought he was too. He said I was magnetic.”

  Magnetic. It was a good description for her, Ella thought. But the idea that Mac had felt that way . . . about Chloe . . . it cut deep.

  “When did you find out he was married?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. He told me. Just . . . needed to come clean, he said. It took me completely by surprise.”

  “Things weren’t . . . good with his wife?” Ella choked on the words.

  Chloe shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t really talk about her.”

  “Never?” Ella said.

  Chloe looked at her, and Ella worried she might have said too much. She began to backpedal. “It’s just . . . often in therapy men give reasons for why they strayed, you know? Their rationalisations? They’ll say, ‘She doesn’t listen to me,’ or ‘She doesn’t have sex with me,’ or ‘She’s a narcissist.’”

  “Oh,” she said. “No, he never said anything like that to me. The only thing he ever said about her was . . .”

  Ella held her breath. Chloe seemed to take an inordinate amount of time to spit out the words.

  “What?” she said finally.

  “That she wasn’t me.”

  Ella downed the rest of her drink.

  After dinner, Chloe and Ella sat in the deep plush armchairs of the covered lounge room. It was uplit and cosy, with floor-to-ceiling windows, which gave them a clear view of Stephanie, Meera, and Jonathan, and Karl and Magnus, who were dancing on the upper deck and intermittently exploding into fits of laughter. (Vanessa had fallen suddenly and violently ill half an hour earlier and had been taken to bed.)

  Despite her commitment to keep her wits about her, Ella accepted a second cocktail. After the emotions of the day, she needed something to take the edge off, to dull the sharp edges of her pain. Chloe, too, accepted another one.

  “Who ended it?” Ella asked. “Between you and Tom?”

  “He did.” Chloe lifted her drink to her lips and used her tongue to position the straw in her mouth. “Couldn’t take the guilt, he said. He said he cared about me, but he was in love with his wife and he got swept up.”

  Ella hated the fact that there was something understandable about that. Each time she looked at Chloe, each time their arms brushed, each time she smelled her coconut-and-mango fragrance, she understood.

  After a moment, Chloe sat up in her armchair and swivelled to face Ella. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “But you’re crying.”

  Ella sat up, mirroring Chloe’s position. Was she? She reached up and wiped away a tear, but it was quickly replaced by another. “So I am. Just drunk and emotional.”

  Chloe leaned forward and wiped a tear away from the corner of Ella’s eye with her thumb. It was, Ella supposed, an unusually intimate gesture, but somehow, perhaps due to the evening light, the alcohol, the gentle rocking of the boat, it felt . . . right.

  “Well,” she said. “No more tears. You’re on vacation.”

  “Okay.” Ella nodded. “No more tears.”

  “Right then,” Chloe said, standing. “Time for bed.”

  They stood together, waving to the remaining guests outside, none of whom were paying attention. Meera, they noticed, was slow dancing with the steward with the dreadlocks. Jonathan was nowhere to be seen.

  Ella and Chloe walked down the spiral staircase to the cabins. For Ella, each step felt heavier than the last.

  “This is me,” Ella said as she arrived in front of her door. She felt grateful to be there. There’d been too many emotions today. Too much alcohol.

  “You’re in the VIP cabin?” Chloe said, eyeing the double doors. “I’m in steerage, the bunk room. Can I see inside?”

  “My cabin?” Ella said, surprised.

  Chloe looked chided. “Is that weird?”

  It was, and yet, perhaps out of tiredness, Ella found herself opening the door and stepping back for Chloe to go inside. She watched silently as Chloe made her way around the lowlit space.

  “Wow,” Chloe said, after she’d finished her very short tour. “It’s nice.”

  She came to a stop just inside the open doorway in front of Ella and hesitated, pulling her ponytail over her shoulder. There was a sudden shift in energy. The air felt fragile and charged. An image sprang to Ella’s mind, of Chloe’s tongue tracing Ella’s lips.

  What was wrong with her?

  “I just realised something . . . ,” Chloe said finally. “I didn’t take the challenge today. To do something that scares me.”

  “You leapt from the upper deck—”

  “Yes, but that was your challenge. Heights don’t scare me.”

  They were inches apart. Ella couldn’t decide if she was exhilarated or uncomfortable. The two, under these circumstances, felt surprisingly alike.

  “Well,” Ella said at last, clearing her throat. “What scares—”

  She couldn’t finish her question because Chloe stepped forward and kissed her.

  It lasted only a couple of seconds. But it was a kiss unlike any kiss Ella had ever experienced. It wasn’t chaste, nor was it French. It was slow, exquisite, and it tasted of chili and tequila. Ella had no idea she could feel so much from doing so little.

  It surprised Ella, the intensity of her reaction. The way her body moved to meet Chloe’s. The way her insides fluttered and her breath caught. It took her back to the heady days of her twenties, when it was fashionable for girls to kiss each other, at nightclubs or parties, usually for the benefit of the boys watching. Then, like now, Ella had enjoyed the kisses more than she felt she should. Back then, when Ella had considered the possibility that she was gay, or bisexual, neither descriptor had felt right. She was predominantly attracted to men, but she’d never felt the sense of . . . wrongness . . . expressed by some of her heterosexual friends at the idea of being with a woman. In fact, she’d often felt curious about what it might be like. With certain women, Ella had always thought, it could feel very, very right.

  When Chloe pulled back, her eyes were cautious. “Sorry. Was that . . . okay? I know you’re married.”

  Yes, Ella thought as that fact came back to her. But my husband had an affair. With you.

  Is that why I’m doing this? Ella thought suddenly. Some perverse kind of revenge? Is that why Chloe is doing this?

  “I’ll go,” Chloe said finally, when Ella still struggled for words.

  As she watched Chloe leave the room, Ella fought an urge to call her back. It was madness, she knew it. Lunacy. Ella blamed it on Chloe’s magnetic energy.

  Just as Mac had done.

  The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes . . .

  —Marcel Proust

  How fitting it was, Ella thought as she dressed the next morning, to be stuck on a boat. Caught somewhere between her life before and her life after. She was aware of what Mac had done, and she knew she would eventually have to go back and deal with it. But for now, the lack of need to address it, or make a decision about it, was comforting.

  The possibility that Chloe had somehow orchestrated their rendezvous last night felt less and less likely in the light of day. After all, if her plan had been to try to seduce Ella as payback to Mac . . . how did she know that Mac would cancel at the last minute? Seducing your ex-lover’s wife was challenging enough when your ex wasn’t around. But if he was right there? No, it didn’t make sense.

  As for the kiss, Ella chalked it up to the cocktails and the situation. At least on her end. She understood that difficult feelings could get misplaced and muddled. One minute she’d been imagining Mac and Chloe together, the next she’d internalised his feelings and made them her own. Still, Ella felt like a nervous schoolgirl as she headed to the lower deck for breakfast. She was half an hour late and still only half the guests were there, all of them in varying shades of green, clutching large glasses of water and coffee. Blister packs of ibuprofen lay haphazardly on the table next to the untouched plates of smoked salmon, omelettes, and sundried tomato focaccia.

  Chloe, Ella noticed, was at the head of the table.

  “Coffee, madam?” the handsome steward asked her. His dreadlocks were out this morning, free of the navy scrunchie. His eyes looked tired. The guests weren’t the only ones who’d had a late night, evidently.

  Ella found herself desperately craving a chai latte. On Saturday mornings, Mac would head to her favourite café, Augustus, to get her one and then bring it to her in bed. She wondered if that was ever going to happen again.

  “Coffee would be great.”

  “It’s been very popular this morning,” the steward said with a smile, tipping his head toward Magnus, who was holding a coffee in each hand and alternately swigging from each.

  The steward went to get the coffee, and Ella made a beeline for the continental buffet of fresh fruit, yoghurt, freshly baked pastries, and home-roasted granola. Not thirty seconds later, Chloe was at the buffet beside her. “Morning.”

  Ella focused on the buffet, as if it weren’t the same fare that she’d enjoyed the previous two days. “Morning.”

  Chloe’s shoulder bumped affectionately against hers, and Ella’s heart rate skyrocketed. “You okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry again about last night.”

  “No need to be.” Ella stabbed a piece of pineapple with a fork.

  “That’s not true. I overstepped. I’m sorry.”

  Ella looked at her. Her face was so open, like a child’s. She was, once again, so willing to be vulnerable. This wasn’t the face of a liar or someone who’d come here for revenge.

  “Please,” she said. “Stop apologising.”

  “Sorry,” Chloe said.

  They both smiled.

  “If you apologise again, I’m going to tell Meera what happened last night,” Ella said, lowering her voice. “Then you’ll really be sorry.”

  As if on cue, Meera appeared, dressed in what must have been one of Jonathan’s T-shirts. Her eyes were smeared in last night’s makeup; her hair was piled atop her head in a navy scrunchie. Both Ella and Chloe clocked it.

  “Coffee,” Meera said quietly to no one in particular. Her tone was somewhere in between demanding and begging. When no one responded, her voice became louder. “For the love of God, someone bring me a coffee.”

  “Or perhaps Meera is having her own awakening?” Chloe said.

  They both chuckled. And after that, Ella’s nerves started to disperse.

  The upper deck, with its fluffed blue-and-white cushions, its pristine loungers, and its rolled white towels, bore no telltale signs of last night’s dancing and debauchery. Ella and Chloe once again sat poolside, their novels positioned in their laps, but by midafternoon, they still hadn’t opened them. The more interesting stories, they discovered, were right in front of them, and they barely drew breath in their desperation to tell them. It was as if they’d slipped into a parallel world, and suddenly they were back in high school. Now, everything was important, urgent, and nothing was out of bounds.

  “Have you ever cheated on your husband?” Chloe asked her, late that afternoon, when they’d moved into the sky lounge to get out of the sun.

  “Depends,” Ella said. “If last night counts.”

  They smiled at each other wryly.

  “And him? Has he ever cheated on you?”

  The question brought Ella out of her head for long enough to remember that, in fact, he had. How odd to realise that, after discovering this yesterday, she’d barely given it a thought all day.

  “If he has,” Chloe said, when Ella didn’t respond, “he’s a fool.”

  Ella smiled. She hated to admit it, but with every passing second she spent with Chloe, the less foolish Mac seemed.

  They drifted through lunch and dinner, not even bothering to include any other guests in their conversation or spare a thought about whether they were being rude. They didn’t even stop chatting as they viewed the school of spinner dolphins that had appeared during happy hour.

  During dessert, as Captain gave his rundown of the evening activities, Chloe slipped her hand onto Ella’s lap. Ella’s heart ceased to beat. It was madness, what she was feeling. At best, she was starting something with a woman who had a track record of getting involved with married people. A woman who’d had an affair with Ella’s own husband! At worst, she was starting something with a woman who knew this, and had an agenda.

  And what about Ella’s own motives? Were they less than pure? At this point, even Ella didn’t know.

  “We were planning a disco for tonight,” Captain said, “but due to the spontaneous disco that started last night, we thought you might want a change of pace.”

  Under the table, Chloe’s fingers traced her palm, her fingers, her wrists.

  “Anyway,” Captain said, “we thought, trivia?”

  The group was perhaps less enthusiastic than Captain had been hoping, but that likely had more to do with their hangovers rather than the trivia. After a few seconds, Meera commented that she was the kind of person who really enjoyed trivia.

  “Makes sense,” Chloe said. “All those right and wrong answers.”

  Meera scowled.

  Chloe’s hand slipped onto Ella’s bare thigh. Ella felt like she was peaking, flying. She became drunk with dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline. Who cared what their motives were? she decided. Who cared about any of it?

  “You’re going to have some stiff competition,” Captain said. “Ella has been the running trivia champion for six years running. Will it be seven, Ella?”

 

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