It’s cold here on the top deck but I’d rather be outside. The clouds are lying low on the horizon and far below me, the sea is steel grey. As I stare forwards across the waves, my mind returns unwillingly to another ferry, another time. When everything had seemed bathed in sunshine…
‘Let’s stay in a storm pod on Lagavulin Bay,’ he had pronounced, throwing his arms wide.
I’d laughed up at him, loving this new version of ourselves, of being a couple once more, rather than a family unit.
Of course I adored my children, had floundered when they all started moving on and needed me less. I’d had to change my whole idea of myself. But the chinks of freedom appearing in our future were becoming more and more attractive to me as well.
We had booked our first holiday together that year, the first one without any of our family since our firstborn arrived on the scene.
But we hadn’t gone abroad for sun, sea, and
