Small wave tattoos on the wrist

"Forty minutes of this," he said. "Then a long one, then nothing. Count the ones that don't come. That's how you know where you are."

Dessie wiped a clear patch on the wet glass with her sleeve. Beyond it the North Sea rose grey and enormous, and a single crest lifted at the far end of the swell, curling over itself the way the second engineer drew it on every margin of the duty roster. He had shown her once, tapping the page with a biro. One stroke, no shading, the top of the wave rolled back like a sleeve pushed up for work.

The ship climbed. Every loose thing in the galley leaned left, the tins, the mugs, the bread knife in its magnetic holder, and then the deck fell away beneath them and everything hung for a breath in the air. Halloran said nothing. He tipped the porridge into bowls and set them along the steel counter, one for each man who would come up the stairs with his hands already reaching.

Dessie counted. Nine, ten, eleven. The swell passed under the hull without breaking, and the porthole filled with plain grey light again. "That one didn't come," she said. Halloran nodded and handed her a spoon, and for the first time that morning the spoon stayed exactly where she put it.