‘Well, you've definitely blown your cover, I'm afraid,' he said. 'You cook better than ever.'

‘Perhaps I didn't cook it!' She challenged him with her eyes.

He gave her a sidelong smile. 'Oh come on. Of course you cooked it.' He wiped his plate with a bit of bread.

‘Well, possibly,' she conceded. 'There's a bit of Eton Mess for pudding if you'd like it.’

A look of sheer ecstasy flickered across his face. 'Yes please. Don't tell Carole.'

‘I won't if you won't, but do make sure you take that bit of ragu off your shirt.’

He looked down quickly and then scrubbed at a tiny spot of tomato. Jo reflected that Carole taking care of his diet was the reason his middle-age spread was kept to a minimum. Maybe younger women were good for men after all. But what would become of the older ones?

‘Here's your pudding,' she said, adding a sprig of mint from the pot she had brought down from the wheelhouse to the dish on impulse. She didn't care that some restaurant critics thought it was common – she liked to eat it. 'Would you like some coffee?'

‘I've still got some wine, thank you.' He handed her his dirty plate and accepted the pudding in return.

‘Even though it isn't very nice wine.'

‘I didn't say it wasn't nice. I just said I've got some that's much nicer on Hildegarde. This pudding, however, is to die for.'

‘I hope you don't mean that literally. Do you have a problem with your cholesterol?’

He laughed. 'Not at all.'

‘Probably thanks to Carole.' She was aware she probably sounded snippy, but she couldn't help it – her recent experiences made it impossible to be completely normal about such things.

‘Maybe. She doesn't really appreciate good wine.’

‘Perhaps that's something that comes with age? Like opera?’

He snorted. 'I've never liked opera.'

‘Perhaps you're not old enough. I only like some of it.’

‘I'm older than you,' he said.

‘Well, it's an acquired taste. Like boating, probably.’

‘You probably just need to make an effort,' he said sternly. 'With opera or boating.'

‘I don't think that would work with me. I'm just too frightened.'

‘What, of opera?’

She laughed but shook her head. 'No!'

‘I think you should give it a go. I promise not to do anything that could possibly frighten you.'

‘Does Carole like boating?' Perhaps he'd taken her out on small trips to begin with, so she could gain her confidence.

‘Oh yes. At least, I think so. I haven't actually asked her.’

Jo opened her mouth to tell him he was very selfish but as she wasn't absolutely sure this was true, shut it again.

He got up. He put down his dish with a clatter. `I'd better go. Carole will be wondering where I am.’

Jo stood up too, and realised Marcus was much taller than Philip. She moved past him to the door to the stairs, opened it and went up them. The fluttery teenager in her couldn't help wondering if he was looking at her bottom and thinking how big it was. Carole's bottom was of the pert, tight, high variety. Hers no longer was and possibly never had been.

They reached the wheelhouse and he turned to her. 'Do think carefully about coming on the trip. It could be really interesting. I never usually encourage owners – they can be a bloody nuisance. I'm making an exception for you.’

She laughed, feeling a bit lightheaded, possibly because of the wine. 'But I'm not the owner, Michael is.’

He smiled. 'That probably explains it.'

‘Well, on behalf of Michael, I'll thank you for coming to look at The Three Sisters. Will you email him or shall I?'

‘I will. I need to ask him if the fuel tanks have been cleaned out within living memory. If not, it'll have to be done before we go. There are a couple of things as well. I didn't look at the navigation lights.’

She felt guilty. 'Oh. I shouldn't have given you lasagne. I distracted you from your job.'

‘Yes you did,' he said. 'But I was happy to be distracted. Goodnight, Joanna.’

She watched him walk away thinking that most men would have kissed her cheek. The fact that he hadn't was more disturbing than if he had. She went back down into the saloon contemplating her feelings. He wasn't the first man she'd entertained by herself since she'd been on the barge. She never had been the sort of woman who assumes every man is making a pass at her, even when she'd been of an age to be made a pass at, but she'd found Marcus both unsettling and exciting. 'Perhaps they're the same thing,' she said aloud as she cleared up his plates and glass.

The week whistled by for Dora as she struggled to bring a little order to the chaos that was the boatyard's office. It didn't take very long before she became much loved and depended on. She made tea twice a day for everyone, and people gathered in her little office space to collect it. When she wasn't chatting, she was filing, sorting and recycling forests' worth of paper. She set up a program so she could do the wages quickly and efficiently and even acquired a wall planner and made everyone decide when they were going on holiday.

Jo was putting the whole dry-dock business out of her mind, or at least she tried to. She was concentrating on her gilding.

Although she was not frightened of the gold leaf in the same way she was frightened of crossing the North Sea in a barge, she was anxious.

All her little bits of carving had been glued on, sanded, gessoed, coated with glue size mixed with clay. Her friend at the art shop had told her to mix up a combination of size, water and a drop of vodka for the final layer and to arrange the surface she was using to be slightly sloping so the water couldn't run back over the gold she had laid. Then she opened her book of gold leaf. It seemed about half the thickness of tissue paper and threatened to float away. It was like trying to catch a strand of gossamer. Just managing to catch it on her gilder's tip she watched it float down to the suede where it would be safe for a few moments. She divided it into two and then brushed her tip over her arm a couple more times, as instructed, so the oil from her skin would help the gold adhere to the bristles. Then, carefully with her clean sable brush she wetted an area a little larger than the space the gold would occupy. Finally, her tongue between her teeth, she caught the gold leaf and offered it up.

Like magic it leapt from the brush and attached itself to the carving.

‘Wow,' she said out loud. 'That really is alchemy.’

A little braver now, she wetted the next section, brushed the tip over her arm and caught up the next piece of gold leaf.

After applying two pieces she had to make herself a cup of tea to help calm her down. She hadn't done anything so exciting for years. Later she would rub it smooth with the agate burnisher until it looked as if the wood was made of gold.

She tried to convey her excitement to Dora when she came home but she realised, as she saw Dora's somewhatglazed expression, that you had to have been there, really.

Tom, who'd become a regular guest at mealtimes, worried away at the two women about the dry docking with the persistence of a particularly obsessive terrier.

‘You two should definitely go. It'll be brilliant! I'm going to go, if I can persuade Marcus to take me.'

‘What was he like, Jo?' asked Dora. 'What did you think of him?’

Jo was glad she'd had a second to think of an answer. The trouble was, she didn't really know what she thought of him. He was confused in her mind with the Marcus she'd known before. Had he changed? Or was he still a bit arrogant, a bit of a womaniser, someone she didn't have the confidence to be natural with? She decided to be economical with the truth until she was clear in her own mind. 'He seemed very professional. He took a lot of trouble to check things.'