The Christmas Voyage

by Deirdre Purcell

Genres: Friendship; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

It is almost Christmas on the Santa Clara cruise liner, and as the ship sets sail from Barcelona for the last time, dramas big and small are to unfold. On board is Kitty Golden, beautiful ex-model and younger wife of New York financier Saul Abelson. They look the picture of cool contentment, but looks can be deceiving. Dubliner Mary Dunne is on board with no less than eight members of her boisterous family. For Mary, though, a long-hidden past brings its own twist...And wide-eyed young novelist Roxy Smith is intent on observing all to help write that difficult second novel. With handsome Captain Leifsson in firm command of the ship, if not his heart, who knows what the journey's end will bring…

Release date: October 19, 2017

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 416

Sample

Roxy Smith sits in a coach. It is bowling along a motorway, transferring her and a party of fellow travellers from Barcelona airport to the MV Santa Clara, moored in the city’s port, to begin an eleven-day cruise/hotel-stay holiday, nine nights on the ship and, at the end, two days in Rome in a four-star hotel.

Having represented Portlandis shipping line in the arrivals hall and shepherded her charges on to the bus, their courier, impeccably groomed in her navy and red uniform, has just given her introductory spiel to welcome them all, has turned off her microphone, and is sitting in the front seat to chat with the driver. Throughout the vehicle, like a colony of waking rooks, the voices of Roxy’s fellow passengers have erupted, decibels raised so they can be heard above the chug of the diesel engine, the road noise and the blowing of the heating system. Infused with anticipation, the good humour is infectious, especially between members of what seems to be one large family. Roxy believes the woman sitting beside her is one of them, youngish, possibly around the same age as herself. She is craning her neck to address the two men on the seats behind.

The coach has entered a tunnel and, with the window beside her acting as a mirror, she can follow the conversation as the woman complains about the cold: ‘I know it’s nearly Christmas but, for God’s sake, this is Spain! Thank God I brought two jumpers. Just our luck, Jimmy, wha’?’

‘You’d have to laugh!’ one of the men yells back. ‘But at least it’s not raining and the sky is blue. Sure what else wouldja want? It’ll be grand.’

‘Well, cold or not, I don’t care,’ the man beside Jimmy chimes in. ‘I’m feckin’ going for a swim the minute we get there. I have to break in me new togs!’

‘Hold your horses.’ Jimmy gives him a little dig in the ribs. ‘It won’t be open. There’ll be nothing open on the first day, not until dinnertime.’

‘An’ what makes you such an expert, may I ask?’ The second man is affronted. ‘Far from cruises you were reared!’

‘I know more than you anyway. I read it up. I’m not an illiterate, like some people I might mention.’

‘Lads! Lads!’ Roxy’s seatmate intervenes. ‘We’re all new to this. Get a grip!’ Turning back, she smiles at Roxy, shrugging. ‘Men! But they’re brothers. What can you expect, eh?’

Roxy smiles back with a conspiratorial nod although, not having a sibling, she wouldn’t know.

During check-in at Dublin airport this morning, she had recognised the Dublin accents within this sub-group, having picked them out as fellow travellers because of the Portlandis labels fluttering from their carry-ons. Later, as she and her group had gathered together in the arrivals hall, the inflections could be distinguished from the others. Most, she figured, were from Northern Ireland, although she hadn’t lived in the Republic for long enough accurately to tell the difference between Belfast and other counties in, or near, Ulster.

She likes the Dublin accent, had got a handle on it as soon as she learned how to interpret some of its weirder idiosyncrasies, like splitting words to insert an expletive: That’s just desperate. That’s abso-fuckin’-lutely appallin’, that is …

After her first novel, Heartbreak in the Cotswolds, had been published, she had moved to Ireland from England on the advice of her agent, Tony, because of the Artists’ Exemption thingy. It meant that any royalty income due to writers like her (a recent recruit to the profession) and other ‘creative artists’, such as those working in the visual arts, composing music or choreography, are free of Irish income tax up to fifty thousand euro annually, providing they earn it from that work. ‘Don’t get too excited, though, Rox,’ he had added. ‘Publishers are having a hard time, these days, particularly with fiction, and there won’t be too many of you getting anywhere near that figure. I wouldn’t want to rain on your parade but your contract is in sterling. With that being a movable feast, these days, thanks to Brexit and all that, you can’t rely on the exchange rate, so you’ll have to factor that in.

‘There’ll be lots of other little Irish taxes and levies on your income. And don’t forget,’ he had added, grinning, ‘I’ll be taking my fifteen per cent before you get any of it! So don’t go putting deposits on that Rolex or Jag just yet.’

His advice had included that she find a ‘little cottage somewhere in the countryside’, if she decided to make the move. ‘Renting in Dublin costs a fortune and apparently, from what I hear, there’s hardly anything available.’ But Roxy was already jumping at the idea because the main phrase she had taken in was there won’t be too many of you. Tony thought of her as a real writer! He had included her automatically in an exclusive club of which for years she had yearned to be a member. And how exciting it was to be officially recognised as an artist by a whole nation …

As for his ‘little cottage in the country’, no way! Born and bred in London, Roxy is a bright-lights girl. As soon as she’d got home from Tony’s shabby little office, she had immediately started an online search for cheap accommodation in Dublin.

Tony Scott had been the first (and only) agent to believe she could make a career out of fiction. Whether sole trader or big firm, every other agency to whom she had sent a proposal and the first chapters of Heartbreak hadn’t bothered even to acknowledge them, much less send her a formulaic rejection letter. After six months of waiting and hoping, she had almost given up the idea of being a novelist.

So, she had been euphoric to receive Tony’s encouraging note – and even more so when, three months later, he had managed to get a two-book publication deal for her with a tiny start-up publisher, whose managing director had decided to specialise in women’s fiction. She would never ever forget Tony’s words on the phone that afternoon: ‘Great news, Roxanne. Bellewether has decided to go with you.’

He had had to wait for Roxy’s excitement to die down. Then: ‘Your advance will be tiny, I’m afraid. I’m working on it with them but they’re not likely to budge. The publishers are all, even the big ones, strapped and I wouldn’t hold my breath. Don’t give up the day job just yet. Anyhow,’ he had added, ‘you’ll have to get down to work immediately. They want this for Christmas – plus they need a proposal and an outline for book two like, yesterday – so it’ll be tough going for you, a lot of burning the midnight oil, but it’s a start and we’re on our way. Congratulations!’

Her advance against royalties had indeed been tiny, tinier still after Tony’s cut, but because she had continued to work at the Weekly Health Advertiser right up to the move to Ireland, she had managed to keep the money untouched, along with savings she had accrued because she had had no time to shop for anything except food.

That savings account had helped her through the nervy move to Ireland and the hefty deposit she’d had to give to the Dublin estate agent against the flatlet he had found for her in Drumcondra, one of the city’s inner suburbs on its north side. But it was now dwindling so she had to get a move on with the second novel, Heartbreak on the High Seas. Unfortunately, up to now, the book had remained stalled at the starting gate, her editor rejecting the proposals she was submitting, but she had high hopes of the holiday being the catalyst to get it up and running.

It had not been her idea to set this one on a cruise, with its shipload of possible characters. Her mum had seen a special offer in the Daily Mail: ‘A thousand people on a ship in a confined space, Rox? And you’ll have nothing else to do, will you? No deadlines except for the book, no one like me leeching on you.’

‘Don’t say that, Mum – please!’

Deep down, though, Roxy had to acknowledge that it would be great to have these days where she had permission to concentrate on work, to make it her sole focus.

It had been a nightmare trying to write Heartbreak while juggling her mother’s needs at home with, at work, churning out slimming-aid advertorials or articles on local kids and their hero service dogs for the Weekly Health Advertiser. She’d found she preferred the dogs to their owners, had always wanted one, but her mum is allergic to dog hair.

The two of them had lived for most of Roxy’s life in Haggerston, one of the now ‘coming’ London boroughs, near the famous gasometers. Her mum, who had distant relatives somewhere in County Cork, had never married Roxy’s dad, of whom Roxy had no memories whatsoever. She didn’t even have a photograph because her mother had burned any she’d had. A construction worker, he had moved on before his daughter’s second birthday, leaving no trace except, her mum always said, the smell of roll-ups and booze in their garden flat.

Somehow, when the flat had come up for sale, her mum had managed to scrape together a deposit and had found a bank willing to take a chance on a divorced dinner lady with a four-year-old daughter. Her illness was still to develop so she’d passed the bank’s insurer’s medical examination. They should own the property by 21 August 2021 – her mum had crayoned the date in big red letters on a piece of art paper and had it framed. Now it hangs over the gas fire in their lounge.

Roxy is as proud of her mother’s courage as her mother is of her daughter’s achievement in getting a novel published at the age of twenty-three. On the day Roxy had come home with the news that she was being offered a contract, her mum had said, ‘I can’t believe it, Rox! You really amaze me! There’s never been any writers in our family – this is just wonderful. And you’re so young! You’re going to have a fabulous career! Let’s ring your nan.’

Like Roxy, her mother was an only child. Her own parents, Roxy’s nan and granddad, live in Glasgow so they don’t see them very much, although her nan telephones and there are always presents at Christmas and for birthdays. Although there are a few second cousins scattered about in England – and a good many more distant ones in various parts of County Cork – almost all just names on Christmas cards. So, with just the two of them, they’re very close.

Her mum had gone along with the move to Dublin, although it meant she would struggle alone with her emphysema until Roxy decided it was permanent. The plan was then to sell the London flat, hopefully for twice what they’d paid for it, clear the mortgage and, with a little nest egg in the bank, her mum could move to Dublin. And when her money was added to Roxy’s income from her tax-free books, they could have a comfortable life together – not that Roxy had given up the notion that her Prince Charming was just around the corner. However, most Irishmen of her age, she’d discovered quickly, while flirty and charming, even up for a bit of offside adventure, seemed to be taken and she wasn’t interested in anything except settling down with a bit of security. She and Mum, she would have to emphasise, came as a package.

In the meantime she refuses to contemplate that the second Heartbreak may not be successful. That the first had sunk without trace was history. Right now, with this bus chuntering along, all she can think about is her new freedom, the permission to spend a day writing and for it to be granted status in others’ minds as real work, not an indulgence. Even thinking about what’s to come causes excitement to flutter in her tummy.

Mental headlines about the next nine days on the ship vary between ‘The Author Sits Inconspicuously to Listen In on Others’ Conversations’ (like Maeve Binchy used to do) and ‘The Author Tête-à-Tête with Fascinating [name of celebrity, as yet unknown]’. It could be an ex-actress, famous but now divorced and travelling solo, trying to mend a broken heart while drowning in too many martinis. Maybe another Famous Divorced Person will be on board (Roxy finds out by ingenious means) to snag a millionaire or set her sights on the craggy-faced but kindly ship’s captain.

Roxy’s mum was dead on, she thinks, to have come up with the idea of this trip. She’s already thrilled at the tenor of the chat and bonhomie on the bus. Even the brothers behind her are pals again, and she feels a lightening of the load on the back of her neck, resulting from the absence of the cosh that’s normally held inches above it.

She takes a quick glance around the vehicle. At a rough count, her seat companion’s group appears to number eight, while Roxy and the eight other travellers consist, she reckons, of three couples, mostly middle-aged, and a pair of women friends. No other solos but if the passenger complement on the Santa Clara numbers almost a thousand, as her mum had said, there are bound to be some with whom she can have a drink.

But only water, she reminds herself sternly, and only now and then. Should George Clooney himself turn up on board and beg her to come to his suite for a drop of Bolly, she would have to decline. Socialising will play second fiddle to writing.

She turns back to the scene outside the window. Initially, she was disappointed at the industrial landscape fringing the motorway into the city (she’d even seen a pair of Golden Arches, for goodness’ sake) but now the coach has slowed to a crawl as it passes through the city centre and they’re moving alongside a wide esplanade, with statues, monuments and other sculptures. It’s populated with tourists and, to judge by their demeanour, locals. Roxy has been doing her homework and knows not to refer to the latter as Spanish because most are fiercely and nationalistically Catalonian.

And on this showing they’re highly confident: even the weightiest old ladies wear their formidable bosoms with aplomb. The girls have bundled themselves into the universal winter uniform of the Western world’s young – fur-hooded parkas, huge scarves, and boots over jeggings or jeans. On the streets of London or Dublin, this gear seems merely to be excess wrapping, but here it’s über-cool.

It’s the gait and the hair, she decides, making notes in the first of four brand-new Moleskine notebooks she’s brought with her – an extravagance she justified as confidence-engendering: Hair, however windblown, remains glossy and dark, casually chic when caught in a comb or a scrunchie, startlingly beautiful when streaming in dark rippling waves from under a woolly hat. And that lovely skin, so darkly golden …

She hesitates, then crosses out startlingly – she’s not startled: she was expecting this. As for dark rippling waves, many women have highlights. She also draws a line through darkly. Can you be darkly golden? She doesn’t think so. The phrases now read: rippling from under woolly hats and that lovely golden skin.

But she looks again at this. Should she take out golden? Isn’t that a cliché? Anyhow, some are olive-skinned. And could she refer to the people, mostly men, selling handbags, belts, dream-catchers, carved figurines, scarves and watches on the pavement as ‘Nubian’? Would that be more evocative, more literary, than ‘black’ or would it be racist? Pitfalls, pitfalls – the public has no idea what goes into writing a novel. She decides not to mention skin colour, writing instead: Street-sellers wearing vividly colour-banded hats are presiding over spreads of their wares.

Too bare. No atmosphere. She amends it: As the steely-surfaced Med shushes behind them, street-sellers, wearing hats of vivid colour, preside over their wares, sorted into neat rows on the pavements. It’s essential that this novel be classy. She examines her latest effort as critically as an editor might – actually, she thinks proudly, it’s quite good – and turns again to watch the scene on the esplanade. Although she has been to Torremolinos twice and Fuengirola once, this is her first encounter with a sophisticated Spanish city – although the possibility of chatting to anyone, let alone a man, is pretty remote: the cruise isn’t a round trip but one way to Italy. She just can’t wait to get on board and start work.

*

Many of the men here are so fit, Roxy thinks, you could eat them. Many have wound long scarves several times around their necks and it’s like they’re inviting you slowly to peel them off. Although she’d had a brief relationship around her twenty-first birthday – he gave her a hairdryer – it had ended in tears and it’s been a long time since she’s had any romantic encounter, even something as simple as a kiss.

Enviously, with the coach having halted at traffic lights, she watches a couple’s progress. The guy is tall, hawk-nosed, like Tom Conti in Shirley Valentine, wearing tight jeans and a leather bomber jacket. His scarf is red, his hair gelled and highlighted. The girl is also wearing a bomber, khaki, military-style and belted. It and her jeans fit so well on her slim frame that they could have been custom-made, while her knee-high pale leather boots with discreet brass accents are the most gorgeous Roxy has ever seen.

They’re walking slowly, in step, each body curved tightly into the other, heads lowered; his right arm is around her shoulders, her left hand cradles his bottom, and when she taps it lightly, he reacts by breaking stride, but still they don’t look at each other …

Could they be her models for the lead male and female characters? Could she put them on the cruise, where they provide a story of true love overcoming some awful obstacle, like a vengeful ex? Could one be married to someone else? Endless possibilities. And on present showing, she could certainly give them some heat in the bedroom.

Having been two-timed by someone she’d loved, or so she’d thought at the time, Roxy can write with great authority on betrayal, and Tony had confided that this had won her the publisher’s contract.

It had come as a surprise to her that it hadn’t been the novel’s breadth, the plethora of themes she had introduced – emphysema, marital desertion, alcohol addiction, single-parenting – but the cheating that had got her over the line. ‘There are lots of problems with the novel as it stands, Roxanne,’ Tony had said, ‘and I’ve emphasised that you’re very willing to work on it. Don’t worry, dear. This is what editors are paid for …’

Now, thinking of it, she is just as excited as she was when submitting Heartbreak One, as she now thinks of her first novel, to all those other agents who had been so rude. Here she is, not even on the ship and already seeing opportunities all over the place. It’s great to feel so free.

She starts again to scribble but the bus brakes hard, knocking the pen out of her hand and onto the floor. She and her companion bend simultaneously to retrieve it from under the seat in front, but it’s the latter who succeeds. ‘Here ye go,’ she says, handing it over and then, indicating the note-taking, ‘You a reporter?’

‘Novelist, actually.’ Roxy can’t quite believe the little ping! of pride she hears in her voice every time she says this.

‘That’s fascinating,’ the girl says. ‘I never met a novelist before. Would I know you? Have you been on the Late Late or anything? I’m Gemma by the way.’ She sticks out her hand. ‘Gemma Dunne. My married name is Conroy but everyone in the family still calls me Gemma Dunne.’

They shake. ‘Roxy Smith. I’m afraid you wouldn’t have heard of me – well, not yet anyway.’ She laughs. ‘I’ve only written one book so far, and it was published in England. But I’m living in Dublin now while I’m writing the second, so stand by! My agent is very positive.’

‘What’s the name of the one you wrote already?’

‘Heartbreak in the Cotswolds.’

‘It’s a sad book, then, yeah?’

‘I suppose you could say that. But it’s not sad all the way through. It’s about a girl whose fiancé is cheating on her and she doesn’t know until she finds messages on his phone. There’s happiness in it too – until she finds out what he’s been up to.’

‘But she shouldn’t be looking at his phone, should she?’ Gemma frowns. ‘Snooping’s a mug’s game, yeah?’

‘I know. But novels aren’t real life. They’re …’ She stops. How to explain the essence of a novel set in the heart of rural England in midsummer as you lurch along a Barcelona motorway in deepest winter? Best generalise: ‘I suppose novels give you the highlights and lowlights,’ she says slowly, thinking it out. ‘Like a long play. You have to hold interest and cut out the boring bits, like having dinner every day, or deciding what you’ll order in a restaurant. You can include them but in a novel you see them differently, through the character’s eyes, putting in something odd that’s never happened before. Hopefully the reader will be interested enough to want to know why it did.’

‘Or you can make them get poisoned in the restaurant by a Chinese umbrella,’ Gemma joins in.

Roxy laughs. ‘Great! You get it! You find the plot, and then you have to, I dunno, use the magic of words to keep things interesting while you’re trying to describe what the characters are seeing or hearing.’ She’s suddenly embarrassed. This has all sounded so trite. ‘Something like that anyhow,’ she mutters.

But Gemma smiles. ‘“The magic of words”? I like it. You see, that’s the difference between artists and the rest of us. I was no good at English at school, hated writing essays – “Pride and Prejudice: is the character of Darcy a misogynist at heart? Discuss –” What’s that all about? Who cares? So what’s the hardest bit, Roxy? How do you find the plot?’

‘Can’t answer that,’ Roxy confesses. She’s delighted all over again at the accolade of being described as an artist, so she’s not going to tell this mere acquaintance the whole story, how hard she finds it to nail down what she really wants to write about: she never really knows until she starts, and her first attempts are always a mishmash.

On the starting grid of a novel and looking towards the winding track ahead, with its invisible land mines, her difficulty seems to be that there are always too many roads on offer. This lane or that? The one over there, perhaps? Too many choices lead to a snarl-up as the ideas jostle for pole position so eagerly that they end up in an impenetrable knot and none can go anywhere. She tries to pick them out one by one, but can’t discard any in case, with hindsight, they may prove to have been The One. You keep, literally, losing the plot. You stay awake at night selecting, developing, dumping and thinking again. The wretched thing consumes you, churning, keeping you awake at night, and when, exhausted, you wake up in the morning, it’s the first item on the agenda.

The plot of Heartbreak One had been, in the end, relatively simple. It had been in the title and she had merely followed its prompting. Or so she had thought, until her editor had intervened.

Now as she has to start book two, her brain is again teeming with possibilities. Again too many. She’s anxious now. Maybe she won’t be able to find a plot. Maybe in the multitude of possibilities she won’t be able to identify the single thread that will pull the reader through.

Oh, shut up, Roxy! If you can’t find something good in such a great context, with swarms of potential characters, you may as well give up the idea of being an author altogether. To bolster herself, she repeats her self-exhortations:

You won’t let this happen, amen.

You’ve done this before, amen.

You’re a confident writer, amen.

You’re determined and focused, amen.

‘I’m always nervous starting a new novel,’ she says to Gemma.

‘Is there sex in it?’ The other woman seems curious rather than voyeuristic. ‘The one you wrote already, I mean.’

‘Plenty.’

‘From personal experience, of course?’

‘Of course!’ They both laugh. ‘Obviously not enough,’ Roxy says ruefully. ‘Hardly anyone bought it.’

‘Ever read Fifty Shades of Grey?’

Roxy shakes her head.

‘Well, I did. My husband gave it to me for Christmas. I found it awful, to tell you the truth. I told him he needn’t be getting any ideas! But that one who wrote it made a load of money, so you’re on the right track, Roxy.’ She added, ‘You should put a lot of sex into this one – not all that hitting stuff, mind. There’s enough hitting and slapping going on in real life without putting it into a book. I should know.’

‘Why?’ Roxy is both alarmed and excited. Abuse victim?

‘I’m a social worker,’ Gemma says, ‘not long qualified so don’t go asking me for any advice, Roxy. You’d be taking your life in your hands! Listen,’ she says then, ‘I’m going to buy that first book of yours. I’ll get it on my Kindle. What’s its name again?’

‘Heartbreak in the Cotswolds.’

Gemma’s quiet for a moment. ‘Are you in Ireland a lot?’

‘I’m English but I live in Dublin.’ And to forestall enquiries about why: ‘Thank you, Gemma. Another twopence in the bank.’

‘Here, give us a lend of your biro.’ Gemma holds out her hand. Roxy gives it to her with a blank page torn from her notebook. ‘By the way,’ says Gemma, ‘don’t put me in your book, okay?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’re writing it already?’ She indicates the notebook.

‘Only background stuff.’

‘So,’ Gemma folds her arms comfortably, as though settling in for a long chat, ‘you’re writing what Barcelona is like and us all here? I saw you looking around the bus.’

‘That’s the general idea, but I won’t be using real people. They’ll be made up in my head – I promise I won’t write about you and your group. Honestly.’

‘But it’ll be people like us? I get it. I think I could write a book, you know. You wouldn’t believe the kind of things I deal with in a day’s work. I’d sell a million on the first day and retire to someplace warm and sunny. But it’s a Catch-22. I have hardly any free time and, anyway, I’d be sacked if I wrote what I really feel about the Irish system. What are you going to do with your millions, Roxy?’

‘I wish!’

‘You writers do make a lot of money, though, yeah?’

‘Oh, sure! Listen, between stints of consulting my muse, I’m working shifts part-time in a coffee shop in Killester to put bread on the table and pay rent.’

‘Put it there!’ Abruptly Gemma sticks out her hand, smiling broadly. ‘Me too! Not now, obviously, but while I was in college getting my degree. Mine was a café in George’s Street. Isn’t this gas, though? That the two of us just happened to sit beside each other – and I’m guessing we’re around the same age too. I’m twenty-five, next bus stop thirty! Can’t believe it, Roxy. It was only yesterday I was in High Babies!’

‘I’m twenty-three.’ Roxy is liking her. ‘We’re getting pretty near the port, I think, and I’m sure we’ll run into each other on the ship.’

But Gemma is looking up at the ceiling: ‘When you think about it, this could be the start of a book. It could be you and me are, like, lesbians and we sit beside each other, at random, like we actually did, and when we’re on the ship we start having an affair, and next thing we find out that we’re long-lost sisters, like we were both adopted at birth. We’re twins and we’ve been separated to different families, but deep down we’ve always been pining for each other. Like, there’s always been a hole in our souls.’

‘But surely we’d have known by looking at each other.’ Roxy gets into the game.

‘We’re not identical twins, and it’s not until near the end of our cruise that we discover the truth.’

Roxy’s stunned. Gemma’s given her the plot of an entire novel. More critically, she’s added yet another possible strand to her own tangle of ideas. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, Gemma, but is there some sort of occasion that you and your family are celebrating? I take it that this is your family you’re with. Is it something big?’

Her companion visibly hesitates. Then: ‘It’s big, all right, Roxy, but it’s – it’s sort of a surprise. I can’t really say.’

Roxy has heard, not just in the hesitation but in the inflection, ‘Back off!’ She does. ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘The last thing I’d want to do is to intrude.’

The bus has stopped again at traffic lights. ‘Oh, look, Gemma – isn’t that awfully sad?’ She points towards a woman in voluminous layers of tatty clothing, ankles swollen over the sides of flip-flops inadequate for the winter. She is wheeling a shopping trolley containing her belongings in black bin bags – but what is truly affecting is that a piece of string has been attached to the trolley’s handle. The other end has been tied around the neck of a greyhound, every rib showing, its head so low its nose almost touches the ground. Roxy’s heart almost breaks.

‘Poor thing,’ Gemma sighs, ‘but maybe that’s what she wants. We get people like her into the all-night café in Merchant’s Quay just opposite the courts there. We find that some of the customers don’t want emergency accommodation.’

‘You’re not saying homelessness is a lifestyle choice? Hello?’

‘Of course not. But a small minority will never come in from the cold. It’s tragic but unfortunately that’s the case.’

‘That poor dog hasn’t made the choice.’ Roxy’s heart is still with the greyhound.

‘