If I don’t do this now I never will.

How long has it been? Seven years? Longer?

She’d be in junior school…

Stop it!

The ferry doesn’t go anywhere near the open sea. Here it comes now, breasting the placid surface with almost swanlike grace. The idea that it could ever get into difficulties is absurd. You take a risk hundreds of times greater every time you start your car.

All you have to do is find a seat on the covered deck well away from the side, concentrate on your book and the crossing will have ended before you’ve read a couple of pages. Think of the sense of achievement you’ll be revelling in when you arrive at the other side!

There’s no queue at the ticket office, but I never seem to reach it. Maybe it’s the memories that flood through me when I watch the ferry pitch in the water as it turns to come alongside the landing stage.

Thunder and lightning. Waves as high as office blocks. The piercing screams of terrified children. Tearful couples saying goodbye to one another. Grown men fighting over life jackets as the order to abandon ship is relayed over the crackling tannoy. A muscular arm pushing me aside, its owner unaware of the bulging maternity dress beneath my coat. A priest offering the last rites to those the rafts and dinghies cannot take. The horrific emptiness in the eyes of a young crewman who knows he will shortly die. The frantic gestures of the drowning as they go under for the final time. Adrift...

I turn back, wanting to be sick. Nothing short of being marched down the gangway at gunpoint will make me board that floating death trap.

The nausea slowly subsides. I need to go somewhere quiet, have a cigarette and put this latest failure behind me.

Bejewelled, black-nailed hands grasp me by the waist. The softest of ebony lips caress my cheek, move sensuously to my left ear. Whispered words in a strange tongue invade my consciousness, soothing and strengthening me.

"Siz okde."

It means…

It means I’m…

The dream dissolves, and with it the translation I was so close to making. My fingers push back my fringe, and I gaze at the familiar patterns of freckles covering my plump, bare arms with a mixture of vexation and relief.

Okde.

It means…

No, it’s gone.

But who was the wicked witch of the waterfront?

It was just a dream, babe. You’ve been letting your imagination run away with you, that’s all.

The clothes strewn on the carpet suggest why. I climb out of bed and put them back in my holdall, trying my hardest to think about how I should dress for the trip to the Isle of Wight rather than what Dave Compton was doing in the shed last night.

Hair up or down?

He wasn’t the least bit surprised by those photographs.

Will it be warm enough to go sleeveless?

And I know for a fact that Kerrie hasn’t said anything to him about the casket.

The light green jumper or the cream blouse?

So why was he sneaking out of the house at such a late hour?

It’s no good. Since neither of the compartments into which my mind has divided itself seem capable of solving the problems they’ve been set, I decide to mothball them until I’ve had my first cigarette of the day.

I trot down to Rosie’s garden in just a T-shirt and my pyjama bottoms, my bare feet making imprints in the dew-soaked lawn as I walk to and fro. The sun is out, and the early blossoms in the neighbouring properties help it to paint a springlike gloss over the quiet suburban scene. How pleasant it would be to live here, to bathe in the feelings of security and belonging that come from settling in a peaceful little spot like this!

I know I’ll never get a place of my own as long as I’m stuck at the Gladstone. Although I have more than enough put by for a deposit, I’d need a permanent job with a regular salary to qualify for a mortgage.

Unless I shack up with someone who already meets those needs — in which case it might mean sharing more than the repayments.

A hand touches my shoulder, making me jump.

“Sorry about that,” says Padraig.

“I should bloody well think so,” I pout. “You gave me the fright of my life.”

“Yeah, I’m uh…you wouldn’t happen to have a cig going spare, would you?”

“Only brought this one down. But you can finish it off if you like.”

“Thanks, you’re a treasure.”

I take one more drag, then pass him what’s left of the Marlboro. He ducks beneath the branches of Rosie’s apple tree and sits on the stile cut into the middle of her fence, his furtive glances reminding me of the times I would light up behind Neptune’s statue in a futile effort to prevent my mother from finding out that I smoked.

But that was a different person altogether. He wouldn’t have responded to Padraig’s grin by smiling back and walking over to stand right next to him.

“Coming with us today?” I ask as he stubs the cigarette out on the wooden rail and flings it behind him into the field.

“Hadn’t planned to.”

“Not really your scene, eh?”

He laughs and shakes his head.

“Cathryn’s — what’s the best way of putting it? — she isn’t that easy to get on with.”

“Oh…?”

“How much has mum told you about her?”

“Hardly anything. But the girls gave me a sort of potted biography. Have you read any of her books?”

“God, you mean that stuff she churns out as Katie Chang? I’ve waded through a couple of them. Lots of steamy lesbian sex scenes — if you’re into that sort of thing…”

“Which of course you’re not,” I chuckle.

He holds his hands up.

“Guilty as charged! But it did make me wonder about her.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into that — if you’ll pardon the pun. I don’t know too many crime writers who fantasise about poisoning their rivals or committing the perfect bank robbery.”

“Fair point. But seriously, don’t get into an argument with her about politics or religion or anything at all controversial. She likes to play around with people, twist their words. Sometimes she has me feeling like I’m walking on eggshells.”

I put on an exaggerated frown.

“One of those, eh? Well, thanks for the warning.”

“No problem. Actually, uh…I was thinking that if you, uh…if you wanted to give it a miss as well we could jump on the train and have a ride along to Brighton. Only takes about an hour.”

So that’s your game, is it? Paint an unflattering picture of Cathryn, then offer up a much more appealing alternative? Very clever.

“Just the two of us?”

“Sure, why not?”

To my surprise I’m tempted. I need to spend a lot more time with the opposite sex if I’m to learn how to manipulate them and ensure that if and when I enter a relationship with a man it’s conducted on my terms and according to my wishes. What better way to begin than on the arm of someone who’s lively, outgoing, intelligent and who knows he has to be on his very best behaviour or he’ll have his mother to contend with?

But this isn’t the time to embark on a dummy run for when I choose my first boyfriend.

“Sorry love, I’ve a feeling it won’t go down too well if I repay Kerrie’s hospitality by going gallivanting off with her son.”

He looks crestfallen, but not for long.

“Yeah, I don’t suppose it will. She’s in a rotten enough mood as it is.”

“Is she? Why’s that?”

“Dave says he’s got to go to work and Sinead’s arranged to meet her mates. Can’t say I blame either of them, to be honest.”

“How rotten is ‘rotten’?”

“Pretty rotten.”

A door flies open, the handle banging loudly against the wall. I turn to see Dave Compton, clad in a pair of stained white overalls, climb inside his van. The engine growls into action, slicing through the torpid Sunday morning air.

Kerrie emerges from the house. Hands on hips, she watches the vehicle roll down the drive and swing right into Woodford Road. Even from this distance I can tell how angry she is.

It looks like today’s voyage might not be such plain sailing after all.

At the corner of Queen Street and The Hard, the weather is warm and sunny. Otherwise, everything is more or less exactly as I left it five months ago.

I can’t say as much for myself. I can hardly believe that I’m the same girl who lurched and tottered away from the ramp outside Portsmouth Harbour station, alone and bewildered, that dark, rainy November afternoon.

How would she have reacted if she’d known what was ahead of her? What might she have done if someone had told her she’d always be female? That there would come a time when she’d learn to accept her new sex?

Thrown herself under the first bus that rolled by, I expect.

Things are very different now, as the last hour or two has shown.

Kerrie’s displeasure at her boyfriend having mellowed over soft-boiled eggs and soggy toast, she took one look at my outfit and marched me directly to her boudoir, where she cudgelled me out of my jumper and into a sleeveless white top cut so low it could impersonate a belt. To this she added a long string of imitation pearls and a cropped light blue corduroy jacket I’d have had trouble fastening even if all the buttons hadn’t been removed. She couldn’t have drawn more attention to my breasts if she’d painted arrows on my shoulders pointing to them.

Sinead may have cried off, but Niamh seemed only too delighted to grace us with her presence, settling into the back of Rosie’s car kitted out in a black-and-white hooped sweatshirt and black ski pants, and jumping out wearing the black silk scarf and beret she hadn’t had time to put on because she’d spent too long on her lashes. This caused Rosie to comment, as she dropped us off outside the dockyard’s main gate, that all the girl needed was a string of onions and a bicycle, and she could be whistling La Marseillaise on the set of Jules Et Jim. Needless to say, both references went completely over Niamh’s head.

All is sweetness and light now, on the surface at any rate. Kerrie, looking as racy as ever in her thin white jacket, strappy top and faded jeans, leads the way past the taxi rank, her eyes fixed on the station entrance. I risk a glance in the direction of the booth selling tickets for the Gosport ferry; if I can look down and not faint at the cleavage I’m displaying, a wooden hut with a felt roof shouldn’t cause me too much distress.

Because if you don’t, my darling, I’ll blow your fucking balls off.

What she forgot to say was that I’d lose them whether I co-operated with her or not.

But that’s all ancient history now. I survived — nothing else matters.

em>Their minds are all programmed to work in exactly the same way. A single appearance, a single set of opinions, a single purpose. They’re a totalitarian regime, a religious cult and a zombie plague all rolled into one.

Not even that.

Kerrie pays for our tickets at the serving hatch in the cramped booking hall, then conducts us along the platform where the electric train due to depart for Waterloo in a few minutes waits silently for its circuits to be engaged. At the top of the slope going down to the Sealink terminal she slips her arm through mine as Niamh skips on, energised by fleeting glimpses of gangways, mooring ropes and uniformed stewards.

We file aboard with the rest of the passengers, thrust without warning into a realm of bulkheads, portholes, lifebelts and other marine paraphernalia. As we reach the door to the main saloon Niamh says she wants to go onto the outer deck; with her mother’s permission I accompany her.

“I don’t know if we ought to stay out here too long,” I say to her as the breeze ruffles my hair, already threatening the dead-centre parting it took me so long to put in.

“Why not? Mum’ll be all right. She was last time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s been scared of boats ever since she went over to Ireland on the Loch Garman and it sank.”

“She was on the Loch Garman? Really?”

Thunder and lightning. Waves as high as office blocks…

Must be another déjá  vu. Yeah, that’s it.

“She was only in the dinghy for an hour and a half, but she said it felt more like a month. It’s okay, she’s cured now.”

“Maybe that’s what she wants everyone to think,” I caution her, remembering how tightly Kerrie’s fingers gripped my forearm when we were walking up the gangway.

“I’d have known if she was fibbing. I always do.” She interrogates me with eyes that haven’t yet learned to disguise their intentions. “Can’t make you out, though. You’re not like most other women. I don’t mean anything bad by that.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“For a start, you don’t go on about men.”

“That’s right, I don’t.”

“Not even to complain about them.”

“What’s the point?”

Jesus, this is hard work.

Now she’s tugging at my elbow.

“Ooh, he’s nice! Over there, by the big mushroomy thing.” She flicks back the luxuriant copper-coloured hair tumbling across her shoulder. “Not bubble-head, the hunk behind him in the stripy shirt. He’s luscious, don’t you think so?”

The tall, strongly-built young man standing next to the capstan has already smiled in response to Niamh’s precocious body language.

“Not my type,” I maintain, but before I can embellish this statement I realise that I know who he is.

“Are you kidding? He’s…oh my gosh he’s coming over!”

“Niamh,” I say sharply. “Go inside and sit with your mum.”

“What? But why?”

“Just do as you’re told.”

She blanches at the harshness of my voice, but obeys without another word. I light a cigarette and wait.

Cunningham swaggers across the deck, his cold grey eyes divesting me of every article of clothing I wear. That’s happened to me before — I’m a barmaid, and I’ve grown used to it. What I’m not prepared for, perhaps because his appearance came as such a bolt from the blue, is the ease with which they lock onto mine and hold them fast. For the first time I begin to see that sexual desire isn’t always about satisfying bodily cravings; it can be motivated by one individual’s wish to exert control over another.

Or to submit…

But is his interest in me such a bad thing? Although it turns my stomach to think that he’s overcome the revulsion he felt when he drove me to Hayden Park to such an extent that he actually fancies me, I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t found a weakness I can exploit to the full by using my sex in the way nature intended.

Careful, babe. This one’s a predator — mess it up and he’ll have you for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and any other meal you care to mention.

But I’ve got to start somewhere. And there’s no denying he needs taking down a peg or two.

“Pick me out in a crowd, could you?” I sneer.

“Someone has to watch your back.”

“It’s my front you seem more bothered about.”

He pushes out a humourless laugh. I want to slap him, but that would only give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d penetrated my defences.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him instead.

“This boat is carrying an extremely valuable cargo. It’s my job to see it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Like to enlarge on that?”

He looks round to check if anyone’s eavesdropping. Behind him, the Camber Dock and the Spice Island pub drift slowly past the port railing. I’m surprised to see them; I hadn’t realised the crossing was underway.

“We’re too close to a result to let loose cannons fuck things up now,” he says in a low voice.

“Meaning me?”

“If the cap fits…”

“You know I’d be a lot less of a liability if someone would have the decency to fill me in on what’s happening. That’s the trouble with your lot. You expect me to do all this work for you, but you insist on keeping me in the dark.”

“What work? Your part in this is to help out at the Gladstone, that’s all. We put you there because we thought you might renew your friendship with the Hodgson girl, maybe get in with her mum and her stepdad. You didn’t, so we left you alone. But now you’ve allowed yourself to be dragged into Kerrie Latimer’s affairs, you’ve made yourself a target for the other side.”

“You’re talking about Egerton and de Monnier.”

“It’s odds-on they’ll try to win you over.”

Egerton’s already made his pitch, but I’m not about to tell Cunningham that.

“So I’m important to you? That’s nice to know.”

The ferry is well clear of the harbour entrance by now, and as the wind increases in strength I abandon my efforts to keep the flaps of my jacket from being blown aside. Cunningham isn’t blind to this, and as I watch him struggle to control his natural male urges my confidence in my ability to outwit him grows.

“It’s done you good, becoming a girl,” he grins. “Given you a backbone.”

“Fuck off. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“You seem to have managed okay. Better than okay, from where I’m standing.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

“Don’t give me that. I bet you stand in front of the mirror all the time, ogling yourself and playing with your tits. You fucking love it.”

It’s an outrageous accusation, designed specifically to heighten the tension between us. And it has the desired effect, because now I want him to make a move on me just to bring the situation to a head.

“Maybe I do,” I say softly, and as our eyes meet once again mine respond to the challenge in that steely gaze with an invitation I know he won’t be able to resist.

When he steps forward. When he grabs hold of my waist and pulls me against him, so that my hands are resting flat on his chest. When his face comes so close I can see the stubble beginning to form on his chin. When I close my eyes and understand that in a moment or two I’ll know how it feels to be a woman being kissed a man. When that warm, moist softness brushes my lips and I part them in instinctive surrender. When his tongue has explored the inside of my mouth for so long that I can hardly breathe and I’m hanging on to his shoulders for dear life...

When he shoves me to one side and walks away without a word — then I appreciate how new to all this I really am.

I head for the saloon, silently pledging vengeance on a scale not seen since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Kerrie and Niamh are in the central seating area; I join them, allowing the gentle swaying motion and relentless throb of the engines to gradually calm me. Through the front window I stare at the Martello towers built in the 1860s to safeguard the country against invasion, and the yachts careening around them like slow-motion butterflies.

“Who was that?” wonders Niamh.

“A friend of my husband’s.” I turn to Kerrie. “He has some rather unpleasant tastes. I thought it best if I sent her back to you.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Fine and fucking dandy.

I let Cunningham kiss me.

Cunningham!

And I got exactly what I deserved for naively thinking I could twist him around my finger.

I’d like to wash the taste of him from my mouth, but I’m not sure there’ll be anywhere in Ryde that sells industrial-strength floor cleaner on a Sunday.

Yet in a way the experience might have done me some good. I proved to myself that I know how to get the man I’ve set my sights on. It’s what happens afterwards that needs work; if I’d held out against Cunningham’s tongue just a little bit longer, he’d have savoured his victory all the more and we might still be snogging now.

But when I repeat the exercise it won’t be with him. I can do a lot better than that piece of shit.

And I’ll see to it that the next guy doesn’t walk away.

Ryde Pier extends nearly half a mile from the shore, a skeletal jumble of wood and steel that at its seaward end broadens into a landing stage big enough to hold a car park, a small railway station, a café and a terminal building topped with twin art deco domes. It’s the gateway to an island I’ve always regarded as quintessentially English, yet in many respects I feel as if I’m entering a different version of our green and pleasant land, an alternate dimension where modern life has seeped rather than flooded in from the wider world.

The train which will carry us to the Esplanade seems to have been put out to pasture here as a reward for its long service on the London Underground. Wearing a face he might have borrowed from an Ealing comedy, the guard watches the new arrivals crowd into the carriages with nary a thought of checking their tickets. This is how society should operate, on principles such as trust and integrity.

Fine sentiments from someone so adept at living a lie.

Kerrie, who has brightened considerably since the ferry docked, keeps her hand on the clasp of her bag as she settles into her seat. Helen Sutton’s notebook is within, concealed inside an envelope that until this morning held an unpaid gas bill. It’s an amateurish disguise, but it makes us both feel that little bit safer.

Thankfully there’s no sign of Cunningham. On the other hand, he probably isn’t working alone.

Waiting for the doors to slide shut, I review what I already know about the woman I’m shortly to meet. Cathryn Simmons was lecturing in Oriental and Middle Eastern Studies at Merton College, Oxford when she began what was to be a close and lasting friendship with the part-time library assistant who had recently moved to the city from south-west London with her husband and five children. Cathryn’s career, which had included research expeditions to such far-flung locations as the Nile valley, Nepal and northern Japan, was curtailed in 1973 after she resigned her post at the age of thirty-six to live with her ailing mother. Although Millicent Simmons has a substantial private income, Cathryn supports herself by running an antique shop in Ryde and writing historical fiction set in a variety of far-eastern locations under the pseudonym Katie Chang. Kerrie has promised me she’s a person I’m unlikely to forget in a hurry.

The train rattles and jolts along the pier. After a minute or so it glides smoothly to a halt beside a narrow, curving platform. As we reach the exit from the concourse and the numbers start to thin, I take my vanity case from my bag and peer in the mirror to check my hair and make-up. This also allows me to confirm that Cunningham isn’t in the group of people behind me.

God, that instant when I felt his tongue slither past my lips and I flung my arms around his neck…

It was an automatic reaction. Ruth’s subconscious memory systems taking charge, like they do when I’m brushing my teeth or signing my name.

True — but they’re still an integral part of the individual I think of as ‘me’. I can’t disown them just because I remember having a different set of responses. I’m the one who now prefers her coffee black. I’m the one who narrows her eyes in an exaggerated fashion to show I’m annoyed. I’m the one who forgets to turn off the light when I leave a room.

I’m the one who yielded to that kiss.

Who welcomed it.

You haven’t really got the hang of this yet, have you? For Cunningham, the kiss was an end in itself. You used it to try and cut him down to size. But that shouldn’t have stopped you from enjoying it as much as he did.

“There she is!” cries Niamh, dragging me into the open air.

The person waving at us from the pavement in front of the gift shop spares me only the briefest of looks, yet it very nearly sends me crashing to the ground. If Cunningham’s eyes stripped me of my clothes, Cathryn’s lay bare my soul. Suddenly I’m painfully conscious of who I am.

And who I’m not.

The sensation of being dissected one neuron at a time diminishes. I have been evaluated, and not found wanting.

But I can’t escape the feeling that the real test is still to come...

I shake myself free from the spell. It’s my guilty conscience that’s examining me, not her.

Cathryn Simmons is forty-two years old and might pass for thirty under tasteful lighting, thirty-five in the merciless glare of an arc lamp. Her olive skin is unblemished, the dark hair falling loosely down her back so silken it does everything but purr. As tall as Kerrie but slighter of build, she wears a tan jacket over a loose white blouse, cream slacks and light brown shoes with low heels. When she smiles, her delicate burgundy lips separate to show teeth so white and even her dentist might have honed his skills attending to royalty.

Impervious to the raised eyebrows she incites among the passers-by, Cathryn greets her friend with a tender embrace and a long, slow kiss. Niamh is welcomed with scarcely less affection. Kerrie introduces me; I feel my hand being taken and held for a second or two longer than would normally be appropriate between strangers. I pull it back as discreetly as I can.

“Very pretty,” she remarks. Her fingers have gone to my pearls, but I suspect she’s referring to something else entirely.

“I’m glad you think so,” I reply, imbuing the words with enough aloofness to make it clear to her that I can be a bit of a bitch towards those that rub me up the wrong way.

“We’ll chat later.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

Cathryn breaks eye contact first. One to me, I think.

Don’t let your guard down, babe. She wasn’t really trying.

Cathryn takes Kerrie’s arm and steers her in the direction of the silver BMW parked outside the hotel on the other side of the road. Niamh starts after them, beckoning me to follow.

“Come on, slowcoach!”

“Mind the traffic,” I call out.

Listen to me, clucking like a mother hen. Before I know it I’ll be baking cakes.

Somehow Niamh manages to grab the front seat. I climb in the back beside Kerrie, sinking deep into the soft leatherette. When I look out of the window I notice that Cunningham is standing outside the station entrance. If he walked from the ferry, he made very good time indeed.

As Cathryn guides the car away from the kerb I watch him turn and head in the opposite direction.

I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict that I haven’t seen the last of him.