Everything was white. The pale wood floor. The white velvet sofas. The long raw-silk curtains. The flawless walls. It was spectacularly impractical for a public vessel—deliberately so, I had to assume.
Another Swarovski chandelier hung from the ceiling and I couldn’t help but pause in the doorway, more than a little dazed. It wasn’t just the light, the way it glinted and refracted from the crystals on the ceiling, it was something about the scale. The room was like a perfect replica of a drawing room in a five-star hotel, or a reception room on the QE2, but it was small. There could not have been more than twelve or fifteen people in the room, and yet they filled the space, and even the chandelier was scaled down to fit. It gave the strangest impression—a little like looking in through the doorway of a doll’s house, where everything is miniaturized and yet slightly off-kilter, the replica cushions a little too large and stiff for the tiny chairs, the wineglasses the same size as the fake champagne bottle.
I was scanning the room, looking for the girl in the Pink Floyd T-shirt, when a low, amused voice came from the corridor behind me.
“Blinding, isn’t it?”
I turned to see the mysterious Mr. Lederer standing there.
“Just a touch,” I said. He held out his hand.
“Cole Lederer.”
The name was faintly familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Laura Blacklock.” We shook, and I took him in. Even in jeans and a T-shirt struggling up the gangway, he was what Lissie would have called “eye candy.” Now he was wearing a dinner jacket in a way that made me remember Lissie’s rule of thumb: a dinner jacket added 33 percent to a man’s attractiveness.
“So,” he said, taking a glass off a tray proffered by yet another smiling Scandinavian stewardess. “What brings you to the Aurora, Miss Blacklock?”
“Oh, call me Lo. I’m a journalist, I work for Velocity.”
“Well, very happy to meet you, Lo. Can I offer you a drink?”
He picked up a second flute and held it out with a smile. The empty miniatures in the cabin floated up before my eyes, and I wavered for a moment, knowing I was on the cusp of drinking too much so early in the evening but not wanting to seem rude. My stomach was very, very empty and the gin hadn’t quite worn off, but surely one more glass couldn’t hurt?
“Thanks,” I said at last. He handed it over, his fingers brushing mine in a way I wasn’t sure was accidental, and I took a gulp, trying to drown my nerves. “How about you? What’s your role here?”
“I’m a photographer,” he said, and I suddenly realized where I’d heard the name before.
“Cole Lederer!” I exclaimed. I was ready to kick myself. Rowan would have been all over him, right from the gangway. “Of course—you did that amazing shoot for the Guardian of the melting ice caps.”
“That’s right.” He grinned, unashamedly pleased at being recognized, though you would have thought the thrill would have worn off for him by now. The guy was only a couple of steps down from David Bailey. “I’ve been invited to cover this lot, you know, moody shots of the fjords and stuff.”
“It’s not usually your thing, is it?” I said doubtfully.
“No,” he agreed. “I tend to do mainly endangered species or at-risk environments these days, and I don’t think you could say this lot were at any particular risk of extinction. They all look particularly well-fed.”
We gazed around the room together.
I had to agree with him when it came to the men. There was a little knot in the far corner who looked like they could survive for several weeks off their fat reserves, if we were ever shipwrecked. The women were a different story, though. They all had that lean, polished look that spoke of hot Bikram yoga and a macrobiotic diet, and they didn’t look like they’d survive long if the ship went down. Maybe they could eat one of the men.
I recognized a few faces from other press shindigs—there was Tina West, whippet-thin and wearing jewelry weighing more than she did, who edited the Vernean Times (motto: Eighty days is just the start); the travel journalist Alexander Belhomme, who wrote features and foodie articles for a number of cross-channel and in-flight magazines and was sleek and rotund as a walrus; and Archer Fenlan, who was a well-known expert on “extreme travel.”
Archer, who was maybe forty but looked older with his perma-tanned weathered face, was shifting from foot to foot, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his tie and dinner jacket. I couldn’t quite imagine what he was doing here—his normal beat was eating witchetty grubs up the Amazon, but maybe he was having a bit of time off.
I couldn’t see the girl from the next-door cabin anywhere.
“Boo!” said a voice from behind me.
I whipped round.
Ben Howard. What the hell was he doing here? He was grinning at me through a thick hipster beard that was new since I’d last seen him.