Gower – Shannon – Sole – Winds: NNW, 21 to 22 knots – Seas: WNW, 12 feet at twelve seconds

He would be present at her leaving do. He would be there on a video link. Even when she arrived at the Corn Dolly, with all those low black beams she loved, she could think of nothing else. She wanted to nudge the thought, with a glance at the shining fruit machine, into the abyss. Only when she saw two of her colleagues (friends, too, of course) pratting around with laptop wires at the ‘Reserved’ table, did it really land. All through her leaving night, which would be hard enough in many ways, this man intended to haunt her with his presence.

‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ Nicola put a steaming plate down, nodding at the laptop. She grimaced back, and for a second searched her friend’s eyes. Could they read her thoughts? I don’t want to be here. Help me escape.

Nicola always brought peace to workplace tensions. Nikki, with long black hair, a gipsy soul. You could see her riding a white horse over a dark horizon, dancing with a bandit chief, his men clapping and whooping by the campfire. If anyone knew he should not be at the leaving do it was Nikki. Nikki might just do something fatal to that laptop, even if the others would not.

‘Mary’s got that oven hotter than hell. I’m going out to cool down.’

She nearly said ‘Can I come with you? Please, Nikki!’ But that would have been cowardice. She would not do cowardice. He was probably taking notes, now he was present. Giving her marks for body-language at her leaving do.

Was it Lorraine’s where it started? Always the laptop shenanigans in the background, the silver rectangle being passed by helping hands over awkward objects, his far-away voice bleating faintly at intervals.

‘Testing, testing, can you hear me?’

Harriet and Kate were stretching out to unplug wires and trace them through chair arms. Their rings and bright nail polish, long, shining hair contrasted with the clipped and regular male profile they passed between them.

‘Don’t drop me, ladies’ his tinny presence broadcast through the laptop speaker. Did Kate and Harriet exchange a smile?

‘Drop him, for fuck’s sake!’ she wanted to scream. ‘Open your hands and let it fall.’

‘Oh, he’s here, is he?’ Mary came out from behind the bar, skin brown and weathered as an old cider barrel. ‘Never mind, eh.’  Aromas of pasties and vol au vents followed her from the kitchen. ‘He’ll get bored. Keep an eye on that laptop screen. Bet his chair’s empty by nine o’clock.’

Nine o’clock. Could she last till then? Got to be at the quay early.

Julia was putting her nose studs in. Not allowed to wear them on reception.

‘Do you want me to accidentally spill a pint over it? Bloody cheek. At your leaving do.’

Julia weaved her young body around the chairs to the bar, more supple than the rest of them, with curves they had lost. She was certainly ruder about him than anyone. Probably could be called on to vandalize the laptop, if no one else did. But there were rumours she had been ‘flattered’ once or twice when she first started. ‘Flattered’ in the car park, and once working late in the offices.

Mary stood over her, protectively.

‘Are you going to be all right? Leaving’s a big deal, isn’t it?’

She had felt the weight of it for weeks. Could hardly stagger the four hundred metres from the portakabins to the Corn Dolly. Tomorrow she would be out on the ocean. Rowing for her life. And why did she say she would do that? Because of him.

‘You can always work here, if you miss it. That’s a promise.’

The Corn Dolly always did these occasions. Since Mary’s mum and dad ran it. In extremis, it would be Mary who took the laptop out and dropped it in the river. More loyal even than colleagues. You would just say ‘Mary, I don’t want him here’, and it would be done.

But this troubled her. Shouldn’t colleagues of a quarter century do that? Stop him even thinking of it in the first place. One of them must have called him to make the video link. Weren’t they her friends?

At the main table, Harriet had enlisted Ben to lift a big, strutted chair over all the heads. Bloody laptop was getting the best seat in the house. The faraway voice came to her, always five minutes behind, as he was at Lorraine’s.

‘I expect someone’s going to spill a pint over me.’

He sounded squeaky and weak through the filling pub. The laptop speakers. It was not how he seemed in the car park at night. A hand on her lower back.

Few at her leaving had seen him like that. Perhaps they thought there was nothing more than this remote, slightly gullible figure. Look at him. They’re passing the laptop over their heads like he’s a teenager crowdsurfing at Glastonbury. Playing games with him.

‘You’re making me feel seasick!’

His squeals are ignored. They pass him on, less glare on the screen away from the window. They think this is what he’s like. Someone you can play games with, take a little revenge on. Because you’ve never seen him when you’re the last to leave the portakabins, and it’s winter dark already.

*

Sole – Biscay – Finisterre – Winds: NNW, 25 to 27 knots – Seas: WNW, 13.5 feet at 10 seconds

Gradually, the laptop was forgotten.

‘I’ll be thinking of you, next week.’ Harriet came and sat with her. ‘You are a brave girl. That’s what we always admired about you.’

‘Oh, come on. You make it sound like I’m rowing the Atlantic in a fibre glass boat.’ She laughed at Harriet’s face. For a moment she seemed not to know if it was a joke.

‘That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?’ They both laughed now.

She would miss them. This time next Friday, they would come out to get their cars and drive home, having forgotten all about her. Where would she be? Cape Verde. Striking out on the Trade Winds 1 route, towards Turks and Caicos Islands. Or down in Davy Jones’ locker?

Whoops came from the dance floor. Julia, Ben and Trog had picked up the laptop and were bopping around with it, getting quite physical, Freya hugging it to her stomach and swaying around in her clingy dress.

*

She avoided the car park at night ever since.  Her complaint did have an effect. But he was not dismissed. Just became this remote thing on a screen. You mostly saw him, if at all, via video link at leaving dos. Often you could tell he was on a train because countryside was rushing by outside the window.

She thought of the other leaving dos when the laptop was there in the background, the tinny voice joining in on the three cheers. Poor Lorraine’s party when she took all her clothes off. And it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t for a laugh. He somehow made her.

That was what she dreaded. The last humiliation. She put off leaving for years just to avoid that possibility. What could he make her do? Give some dreadful speech she regretted for the rest of her life? Do a striptease?

Finisterre to South West Atlantic – Warnings of gales in Plymouth, Fitzroy, Biscay and South East Iceland

From the fanlight in the ladies, you could see an unfamiliar car parked in the shadows. Away from the Hyundais and Nissans of her colleagues. A laugh carried on the cold, evening air. Harriet came out of the pub door and ran over to the new car. She bent down to talk to someone through the window. Was that him? She had a feeling it was. Harriet, who had always been her friend, was becoming her enemy.

This is what she dreaded. She must go back to the damn laptop and check he was still there. That he had not got in his car and driven to her party.

Could she leave? Get out, before he came. No one seemed to notice her. But it would cause offence to walk out. There were presents on the ‘Reserved’ table. They would presumably be given to her at some point. One big square object was probably the main gift, wrapped in shiny paper, with a bow. The other was a less easy object to wrap, perhaps a pot plant. Uncaught corners of paper escaped the Sellotape, making it look like a human head under shiny paper. His head. That she would have to take home with her.

‘Are you enjoying your party?’

Kelly stood in front of her, just at the pub door. Kelly she had worked with for years but never really got to know. For some reason they had never talked. It seemed wrong to do so now. Kelly probably did not want to talk either. Not that they disliked each other, just that they hadn’t talked before and it was too late now. Their saliva had dried in dusty channels where no words could pass. Kelly was probably standing at the door thinking about leaving as well. ‘I wonder if I could get away with it. Just sneak out, get into the car and drive off. She wouldn’t miss me at her leaving.’

‘How are you feeling?’ Kelly asked. She looked surprised to have found something to say. ‘I mean, has it hit you yet, or are you still feeling like an employee?’

‘I don’t know. It’s …’ She did not know what she was going to say. Through the crack in the door, she could see the unfamiliar silver car with Harriet’s arse blocking the view of the driver. A high, feminine laugh came across the parking bays. Better not be at the door when she came back.

‘Sorry, Kelly, I’ve just got to go to the ladies. Back in a minute.’

She passed the laptop on her way. It was hidden by a discarded cardigan. One glance might help. The relief if his chair was occupied. Then she could forget the threat. That he might be out there in the Volvo, talking to Harriet. But she did not want to thrust her gawping face at the screen in case he was there. He would think she could not resist. Curiosity getting the better of her. It would make his day.

She went on, clacking along the cold tiled corridor to the toilets, thinking about the interior of his house on the laptop screen. All its contents had lodged in her mind with one five second glance.

Trade Route 1 to Turks and Caicos: Winds, NNW 55-80 knots – Seas, WNW 30 feet at 5 seconds. Becoming cyclonic

There was something else. When she looked at the screen and into his house, she noticed something on his desk. A pen with the top off. An envelope. And something that must have been a card. It must have been a leaving card. You could see little blocks of words around the margins where individuals had secreted their parting thoughts after weighing their position in the relationship hierarchy to the person leaving. It was her leaving card, and it was on the desk in his house.

She smashed the toilet door against the wall when she entered. She thought he might be hiding there and it would be best to hurt him first. Through the fanlight she could see that big, unfamiliar car. Now Harriet’s backside had removed itself, it was easier to see.  No one inside. An open silver laptop on the passenger seat. Behind her, one of the cubicle doors began to open. She thought of her leaving speech and the words she had never been able to find.