The sun was barely above the horizon and Vanessa was already hanging out her washing, her back to me. Today she wore red and it made her look thinner, somehow. I hoped she hadn’t been really sick, instead of just slightly seasick.
I approached her as quietly as I could, just watching her.
“Good morning,” I greeted her with a smile.
She turned as if I’d hit her, and I realised my mistake. “It might be, if the southerly would calm down some.” Her voice was colder than her icy expression.
“You’re not Vanessa,” I stammered.
“No,” she replied frostily. “I am Belinda, deckhand on the Siren.” She said this as though she were announcing her appointment as the queen of the known universe, instead of telling me she was just a deckie, the same as me.
I bit back a laugh. The ice queen might have delusions of grandeur, but I didn’t want to get into a fight with Vanessa’s deckie. “Where is she?” I asked reasonably. Hell, if I’d met this one first, I wouldn’t have come within shouting distance of any of the crew of the Siren. Belinda looked like she could have taken Vanessa’s dinner shark with nothing but her teeth before using me for a toothpick.
“The Siren is moored at her jetty,” Belinda said slowly, as if to an idiot, before she turned and pointed at the boat.
“Not the bloody boat. Vanessa. Where’s Vanessa?” I asked, getting irritated.
“She’s making arrangements for the Siren to go into storage until next season, so that we can leave by Monday.” She sniffed with distaste.
“Vanessa’s leaving next Monday?” I blurted out.
“If I can’t persuade her to leave any sooner, yes.” Unwilling to prolong the conversation any further, Belinda the ice queen turned on her heel and stalked up the jetty back to Vanessa’s boat.
I stuck my tongue out at the sourpuss’s back. Now that I looked more closely, I saw the differences. Belinda was thinner, with much smaller boobs. She walked more stiffly than Vanessa, as if each step required a conscious effort. Or she had a spare fishing rod up her arse. Add that to her expression and she was such a different girl, I wondered why Vanessa put up with her.
Maybe she cleans the boat like a demon. Or maybe she makes ice between her legs to fill the icebox. I started laughing and found I couldn’t stop.
Belinda turned and glared at me, almost tripping over and falling into the water. She straightened up in an air of high dudgeon, her nose in the air, as she trotted back to the Siren.