You are shaking still, but there is a little corner in your fear where reason has entered. He finds it difficult to look at you, now that your eyes are open. His own eyes are dark but somehow distant, as though captured by hidden thoughts. The flesh is smooth, nut-brown and boyish, and his pale blue cotton shirt above the jeans is clean and neatly ironed, as though a mother somewhere still looks after him. ‘You’re alive then,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately,’ you reply. ‘And anyway, what do you care?’ His face wrinkles, rejecting your words. ‘I’m no’ the kind of pervert who can fuck a girl when she’s dead, man. Or when she’s blacked out neither. Where’s the fun, if she dunna know what’s happening?’ He assumes an expression of transparent reasonableness, as though inviting you to argue the point. You are thinking quickly now. You have only one chance to find a protector on this ship, and this is it. Keep him talking. But it is hard to talk when you feel sick to the core.
