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I looked at my watch. ‘Two forty-five.’
She frowned. ‘It can’t possibly be. It was about two o’clock when we were at the cafe.’
I shook my wrist although what good that would do, I wasn’t sure. And then I listened to it, which of course was also a waste of time, the battery must have run out. Eddy had given me that watch for Christmas two years ago, so it wasn’t that surprising. But why don’t watches warn the wearer when they are about to die? Some sort of alarm or flashing light?
My mouth was suddenly dry, and it was nothing to do with the heat of the day.
‘My watch has stopped, anyone else got the time?’
‘I haven’t worn a watch for years,’ Evelyn said.
‘Nor me, I just use my phone,’ Diana added, ‘which I’ve left in my cabin. I don’t want to get caught for huge data roaming charges. I remember reading in the paper about a girl who was on holiday with her parents and chatting with her friends on Facebook, and when they got home?—’
‘But what time is it?’ I said, starting to panic.
The three of us looked around, but the only people we could see were a group of teenagers in the distance, pushing each other around and laughing.
I scrabbled about in the depths of my handbag, pulled out my mobile phone from the bottom and turned it on.
‘We really should get back,’ Diana said, ‘we don’t want to miss the coach back to the ship.’
‘It’s nearly quarter past four,’ I said.
The horror of realising we were so late hit the three of us.
Evelyn put out a hand and I pulled her to her feet.
‘We’ll be pier-runners if we aren’t careful,’ Diana said. ‘Those people you see on television running alongside the ship and shouting to be let on as it leaves the port.’
‘Like that famous actor and his wife,’ I said.
I was sounding quite calm but inside I was starting to worry even more.
Diana nodded. ‘And everyone on board is laughing and waving at them.’
‘Oh God. Come on, we must hurry,’ I said, putting a hand under Evelyn’s elbow.
She shook me off. ‘That won’t help,’ she said. ‘This ankle feels very uncomfortable, I’ll just end up going A over T and smacking my head on the cobbles and making things a darned sight worse. I might still have staying power but I’m not that nimble. Now then, which way do we go?’
Good question.
It didn’t take us long to realise that we had meandered around for so long that we didn’t know where we were or which way to go. All those little streets and alleyways looked much the same. Some of the houses had information boards outside them telling us briefly what the house had been for and sometimes who had lived there, but that was all.
I didn’t know about the other two, but I had always had a terrible sense of direction. Eddy had been the one to read the maps when we went anywhere and sometimes in an unfamiliar town, had to physically turn me round to get back to the car.
‘The sun is over there, so that must be west,’ Evelyn said, ‘or south. Or southwest. Not north anyway.’
‘Which is where the coast is, and therefore the ship,’ Diana agreed.
‘But not necessarily the entrance,’ I said unhelpfully.
We ummed and ahhed for a bit, all the while making our way back, hoping it was the way we had come. Some of the ruined houses looked familiar, and then occasionally they didn’t, at last we came out in front of a green space, surrounded by broken pillars and arches.
‘We definitely haven’t been here before,’ Diana said. ‘This place is so huge. I had no idea.’
‘And they are still excavating,’ Evelyn said.
‘Oh God! Where the heck are we?’ I said, my voice getting rather squeaky.
