Chapter twenty-four

I'm about to head off to ask reception about the party tomorrow night, but Emily grabs my arm and pulls me back onto the sunbed. I practically fall into Tasmin's lap and she sits frozen for a minute before I crawl off of her, trying not to show her my heated cheeks.

"SELFIE!" Emily screeches. Lilli ducks her head around the bed walls, probably to see if anyone was giving us dirty looks. "We gotta preserve this precious moment in time. We'll look back on this in years to come and remember being together on this cruise," she rambles, tapping into the camera app.

"Hang on, let me just fix my hair," Ben says, running his fingers through his curly blond hair. When he stops, I see no difference. "All done."

"Everybody, say 'Cheese'!"

There was a time when I took happiness for granted. When I deeply believed that everything that happened had to be good, and bad things only ever happened to bad people who deserved it. But not my mum. Never my mum. Because my mum was an angel, and it wasn't until I sat beside her on her deathbed that I really welcomed that thought.

I refused to think that she would leave because she'd always been there. Every thought I had for the future had my mum in it. And it was at that moment when her angelic presence came to me, fleeting like every angel that ever visited mortals, that I knew that she wouldn't be able to stay. The Lord would want her to be rightfully in heaven, where good people like my mum go. She would spread her wings and fly far away from me.

"I'll always be with you," my mum told me, "You just have to remember."

I remember being confused. "Remember what, mum?"

She chuckled and gently brushed my tear-stained cheeks. "Remember that I'll never be gone. I'll still always be here to help, no matter what it is you need help with." She assured me calmly, but I knew that she was struggling to speak; her voice was crackly. Like an old record player.

"So you'll help me with my math homework?" I remember asking cheekily.

I was so happy to get a laugh from my mum, one that wrinkled her face but made her look anything but old. "I'll do my best, but you also have to do your best too, alright?"

I nodded.

"Promise me you'll make the right decisions," in all seriousness, my mum said to me.

My mum was relying on me to make the correct decisions in life. If that is not an honour, I don't know what is. I took her hand from my cheek and held it tight in my hands. "I will."

My mum can see me right now, waiting anxiously in front of the girls' cabin door for Tasmin Kelly, my friend and enemy, my only source of true happiness and the one who took it away from me to begin with. Someone I want to learn to love, someone I have to hate.

I thank my mum for her calmness and serenity that she passed on to me, so that I can hide so much emotion inside, something that I found a burden years ago.

The door swings slowly open, and Tasmin appears, bluebell eyes meeting my eyes again, piercing through me mercilessly. I don't think she even realises how mesmerising her eyes are. She wouldn't even have to try to bring a person to their knees with eyes so bold and true. So terrifyingly magnificent. Like the colour of shallow water surrounding a Mediterranean island, pristine and untouched by human's greedy hands.

"Harry," her voice says, soothing like the sound of small waves running up the pale sand, tickling my toes before falling back again into an unknown that I can only discover if I follow the waves into the dangerous depths of the sea.

I know I've stared a little too long.

"Beautiful," I murmur.

Dinner at the Waterfront restaurant tonight feels more like a listen-and-watch sort of activity. I stay silent almost the whole time just listening to the group recount and comment on the most recent celebrity gossip and "heart-shattering" happenings in popular television shows. I'm fine with it, because after staring into Tasmin's eyes for too long my whole body feels weaker.

Despite that, I still catch myself glancing in Tasmin's direction, meeting Ben's winking eyes on the way back.

In the hallway of Deck seven, several racks hold photographs of passengers aboard this ship.

Ben points them out. "Hey, aren't those the photos we took when we were about to board the cruise?"

"Everybody split up and start looking because the winner gets cake," Lilli announces, and we all go bananas.

Ben and I search through one section together, examining each photograph for familiar faces, shifting some to see behind them. I don't mean to, but I pick out a photo of Ally, almost pointing her out as one of our friends. Then I remember that I'm the only one who knows her, and no one is allowed to know who she is. I glance slightly at Ben, who doesn't seem to notice anything, so I slide her back into the slot, behind two other photographs and move on silently.