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young man. I thought you wanted us to be friends,’ said her father when she remonstrated with him about excluding her from these invitations.
    An expression of her paternal grandmother’s came into her mind: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’
    What Joyce wished for right then was for things to go back to the way they had been. Her wish was to be emphatically denied.
    At the end of a typical morning of domestic crisis aboard the
Shirley Anne
– the electric kettle had blown the entire system again, and then the bottled gas ran out as they tried to cook breakfast on the little two-burner gas hob – Charlie dropped the biggest bombshell yet.
    ‘Well, at least we won’t have to be putting up with this shit for much longer,’ he announced. ‘I’ve sold the
Shirley Anne
. Some twat of a first year has bought her. He’s got absolutely no idea what he’s taking on.’
    ‘You’ve done what?’ she asked. ‘You can’t mean it.’
    ‘Yep, I can. And I have. I’ve had enough.’
    ‘But she meant so much to you. And me, come to that.’
    ‘Time to move on, Joycey.’
    He didn’t even sound like Charlie any more. ‘Time to move on’ indeed – the old Charlie would never have spoken to her in that patronizing way.
    ‘I can’t believe you’d do that, and without so much as a word to me!’
    ‘Why would I need to discuss it with you?’ Charlie asked curtly. ‘She’s my boat. And she was mine before I even met you. It was my decision to make.’
    ‘But the
Shirley Anne
is part of our life together  . . . ’ Fighting to hold back her tears, Joyce took a step away.
    Seeing the hurt in her eyes, Charlie softened his tone. ‘Look, I’m sorry, sweetheart. I thought it was my responsibility – I didn’t want to burden you with it. You have to admit, it’s time we moved on. We can get a little flat in town  . . . ’
    He didn’t want to burden her? For a moment Joyce was too stunned to speak; it was as if Charlie had suddenly morphed into her father.
    ‘And you have the money for a flat, do you?’ she snapped.
    ‘Well no, not exactly,’ Charlie continued, his tone patient and reasonable. ‘But your father has offered to help.’
    Joyce couldn’t believe her ears.
    ‘My father? Have you two been plotting this? The
Shirley Anne
is our home, yours and mine, Charlie. Did you connive with my father to get rid of our home?’
    ‘No, of course not,’ said Charlie, reaching out to her.
    ‘And what about our gap-year odyssey?’ Joyce demanded, brushing away his hand. ‘What about sailing off into the ocean and letting the winds take us where they will? What about our dreams, Charlie?’
    He shrugged. His face gave nothing away.
    ‘Maybe I have different dreams, now, Joyce,’ he said.
    ‘Well, you know what, Charlie, when you told me that was what you wanted to do and that you wanted me to do it with you, to sail away with you aboard this wonderful old boat, I thought it was about the most romantic thing I had ever heard in the whole of my life.’
    Charlie stepped towards her, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips on hers, thus making it impossible for her to say any more. At least he could still be unpredictable, it seemed.
    He stroked her hair tenderly and stopped kissing her only in order to speak.
    ‘I still have dreams, my darling,’ he said. ‘And I have one great big dream that only you can make come true. Will you marry me, Joyce Tanner?’
    Joyce felt her jaw drop. She was taken totally by surprise.
    She had always assumed that she and Charlie would marry one day. They’d both been certain from the start that they wanted to be together for ever. But the last thing she expected that morning, after Charlie had so unceremoniously blurted out about the sale of the boat, was a formal proposal.
    She stared at him in silence for a minute or so.
    ‘Well?’ he enquired, and flashed the old lopsided resist-me-if-you-can grin, which had become, she thought, a depressingly rare