down her face. For a while I thought that maybe it was just a whole lot of sweat and we could ignore it, but then she started to gurgle a bit.
Martha and I looked at each other and then at Sally.
“You know, it’s okay to cry,” said Martha. “It helps the pain.”
“How would you know what kind of pain I’m in?”
“Sweetie, we’re on a boat. There are only a hundred and ten or so of us and the rumours have been flying. You haven’t exactly kept your sorrow to yourself. You’ve been moping about the ship for all to see.”
“What rumours?” she asked.
“Take your pick. For example: you just lost a child in childbirth and are suffering from postpartum depression.”
Sally gave a weak smile and shook her head.
“How about: your business just went bankrupt and you are in debt over your earlobes?” Where did Martha find these metaphors?
Sally slowly shook her head.
“Okay then. You’re a murderer, intent on revenge.”
Sally suddenly covered her face and shook her head.
Sandy squeezed her on the shoulder, in an attempt to comfort her, but Sally shook her off.
Martha caught my eye and knowing what she was about to do I began shaking my head, but she pretended not to see me. “Final scenario: Cordi here accidentally overheard your conversation with Arthur on the plane.
He broke up with you.”
Sally began sobbing then and Sandy gave us the hairy eyeball, but we stayed put.
Eventually Sally choked out, “He said he loved me.”
The words, though muffled and tear laden, were easy to hear — the universal story of love’s cruel side.
“I don’t know how I can survive without him,” she said, then whimpered. “I don’t think I can.”
We were saved from all the normal useless platitudes that accompany such a statement by the sauna door open–ing and two more women coming in. They were as close to Mutt and Jeff in size as any friends I’d ever seen. One was the woman who had tried to muzzle Peter, and had asked the question about how to get away with murder on the boat. She was very thin and at least six feet tall.
She had short, wavy black hair and a no-nonsense sort of face with an aristocratic air to it.
The other was the woman who Terry had skewered.
She was nudging five feet on her tippy toes. She had really frizzy, grey streaked hair and watery grey eyes that matched her complexion. She was a woman of angles — everything sharp and pointy from the top of her head to her nose and chin to the hipbones sticking out through her bathing suit.
I thought that Sally and Sandy might leave because they had been in longer than we had, but they stayed put. Martha introduced me to Elizabeth Goodal and Tracey Dunne, from the writing group. I was beginning to feel hemmed in, and where, I wondered, were all the men? This was a shared sauna after all, but it would be a hell of a lot nicer without bathing suits. Tracey had taken up a position beside me, making me feel like a giant.
Elizabeth broke the awkward silence by saying to no one in particular, “I just came from the dining room and Terry was lacing into some poor guy, telling him he was incompetent and the cause of the Zodiac fiasco.” She looked at me with a deprecating smile and said, “Nice work by the way.”
I opened and closed my return smile in a fraction of a second. “Is Terry always like this?”
There was a long silence and then Martha asked, “Like what?” As if she didn’t know.
I took a deep breath and said, “Arrogant, rude, demanding.”
“Pretty much, yes,” said Elizabeth.
“Why do you all put up with her?”
I watched as the group looked at each other and liter–ally closed ranks, even Martha, who said, “She’s a really good teacher and she knows all the right people in the writing world.”
“You mean she can get your book placed in the hands of the right agent?” I looked at them and they all nodded in unison like a bunch of synchronized swimmers. Is that really how it worked?
“I’ve never heard of her,” I said, wondering how someone so abrasive could know all the right people.
“She was in all the newspapers.” It was the first time that Tracey had spoken, even in greeting, and I was struck by the depth of negativity in her voice, like Eeyore in a bathing suit.
“You mean her trial?”
“Yes.” Tracey glanced at Elizabeth and Sally as if seeking corroboration.
“She spent time in jail for a murder she didn’t com–mit. Right?”
Tracey slowly nodded.
“What happened to her? How did she get involved?”
I looked around at the lot of them, but no one seemed to want to answer so I focused my gaze on Martha.
“Just read the book she wrote about it, Cordi. It’s all in there.”
“Yeah, but can’t you give me some more detail?”
Duncan’s version had been sparse to say the least.
Martha made a big show of letting out her breath.
“Okay, here goes, but it’s really long and convoluted, and you should read the book to do it justice.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re on a boat, Mar–tha. Where am I going to find her book?”
“Ship, Cordi. As in umiajuaq.” I stared at her and she laughed. “The Inuit distinguish between them too.
Umiaq is a boat, umiajuaq is a giant boat.” When I didn’t say anything she shrugged. “It’s a ship if it can carry a boat and it does have a library.”
Yeah, right. As if it’ll be in the ship’s library, I thought.
“One of the guys in Terry’s adult ed writing class, Michael,” said Martha, as she settled into her storytell–ing role, “was an archaeologist doing research on the Queen Charlottes….”
The sauna seemed suddenly very quiet, except for a sudden muffled cough somewhere — probably Sally.
Martha continued, “Terry thought it would be a good idea to tag along and write a book and Michael agreed.”
“Reluctantly,” said Elizabeth.
“They were in the western part of the Queen Char–lotte Islands on the west coast, with a group, camping
