“I should go” I said slowly to her, “I’m ruining your rug.”
 “Yes,” she said, stepping to the window and resting her hands lightly upon the sill. “I think we both knew it would never work. We tried… but… we’re from such different worlds. We are two snowflakes that fell to earth together and now the thaw is coming.”
 She flicked her hair. She let out a long sigh and brushed a silk handkerchief to the corner of her eye. I sneezed so hard mucus shot through my fingers.
 “Perhaps one day the snow will fall again in some far distant land…” she whispered.
 The sunlight broke through the clouds to brush her cheek for the merest second, revealing the familiar profile, the familiar acne and the scar she had received when she stood up underneath a cupboard door that I’d left open.
 “Can I perhaps come back and get my stuff some time?” I asked hopefully.
 “I must leave upon the next tide…” she said quietly.
 “So is that a no?” I asked.
  The handkerchief fluttered slowly to the ground.
 “You dropped your handkerchief” I pointed out.
 She wafted her hand dismissively without turning around.
 After a while I just gave up and left. It would be simpler to download the albums off the internet. We never had a record player but bought vinyl because it seemed more romantic.

 “Your tale is full of lies and deceits” said Jacque and slowly stretched out on his bunk in the dim light cast by the swinging lantern.
 “How can you tell?” I asked him, stroking my beard slowly.
 “You left something out… something important… perhaps because you fear to reveal yourself” the elderly sailor said, pulling the collar of his jacket up in an attempt to ward off the arctic chill.
 “What would be the point of lying? Who but you, I and The Captain will hear?” I shrugged, stoking my pipe.
 “A man does not decide to spend ten years on the sea just to escape flat-packed furniture.”
 “I was escaping a broken heart… I only mentioned the furniture to finally answer why I have that scar on my finger” I sighed.

 The ship slowly crawled up another giant wave. The Captain, still gripped by the madness that had enveloped him in St. Petersburg, was hunched behind the wheel. He hadn’t moved in weeks and neither Jacque nor I had any idea as to where he was taking us. The bridge door was locked and a flurry of bullets through the metal had dissuaded us from enquiring further. We had merely accepted our fate as a punishment for some unknown crime against his crazed, god-like, worldview. Neither Jacque nor I knew the way any better.

 “So why did you become a sailor Jacque?” I asked.
 The Frenchman slowly pulled his cap down lower over his eyes.
 “It’s not a story I’ve told to any but this sweet little Tahitian whore one night many years ago… before she stole my chastity, my heart and my wallet.”
 “Tell me… I can’t sleep.”
 “Read” grunted Jacque, “it gets less disturbing the tenth time.”
 I stared at The Captain’s book. Four hundred pages in no understandable order bound in human skin. Jacque claimed to recognise one of the tattoos as belonging to the Captain himself. I really wasn’t sure whether that made things more or less disturbing. The book had replaced the ship’s former library one night. At first we had been hesitant to read it but then The Captain had announced over the loudspeaker that we must and that a quiz would be held each evening in which we could win our food. One night the prize was for The Captain not to smash the ship into an iceberg.
 “I’m not going to read it. It makes my hands smell strange for days. Tell me your story.”
 The ship lurched violently and there was a terrible sound of grinding metal. The first trickle of water found its way under the door.
 “Well,” sighed Jacque, glancing out of the port-hole at rocky cliffs, “I guess it’s now or never…”
 I leant back and let out a single smoke ring, watching it drift slowly towards the rusting ceiling.
 “I too had a woman. She too left me. She was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and I was a mere factory labourer. I slaved fifteen hours a day for just enough money to feed my dying mother.”
 Jacque fished a battered snuff box from his pocket and took a pinch. His grey moustache was stained with a patch of dark brown.
 “One day our eyes met across the injection-moulding machine. The moment I saw her I knew that she must be mine.”
 I closed my eyes and pictured the scene.
 “She was as pretty as the first cigarette of the day” whispered Jacque to himself. “I stopped the entire production line to injection-mould her a single rose. She laughed delightedly. A sound that was more musical than the finest instrument played by the finest musician” Jacque said, smiling sadly to himself.
 I felt the water brush my toes but did not want to interrupt Jacque.
 “Her father found out. I was fired. Mother starved. I was beaten by a gang of men. My fingers were broken so I might never injection-mould a rose again…”
 “What happened to the girl” I asked, drawing on my pipe even though it had long since extinguished itself.
 “He sent her away to Paris, where she met a man who showered her with diamonds. I saw her once more… as I begged outside a restaurant window, trying to hold the bowl between my crippled fingers. The wind was blowing hard that day and the bowl fell. She picked it up as she passed. For a moment our eyes met as she placed it back in my hand… as she dropped a dozen francs inside… I thought for the merest moment I heard her breath catch… perhaps recognising me but unable to place me? Then she was lead away…”
 Jacque let out a long breath.
 “The Captain found me a few years later, near death, curled inside his lifeboat for shelter. He offered me this job and I knew it was the only way for this elderly cripple to put his past behind him.”
 The water rose to spill over our bunks.
 “So,” said Jacque, sniffing back a single tear from many years of practice, “share with me your true pain as we sink beneath the waves to drown our sorrows in the depths. Why did she really leave you? What terrible thing tore love asunder?”
 “I slept with her sister” I said awkwardly.