I was twenty-three when I took the job on the Celestine Duchess. Fresh out of hospitality college in Southampton, no girlfriend, no real plan — just a contract, a uniform, and the vague idea that working on a luxury liner would be more interesting than managing a Premier Inn off the M3. I mean, technically it was. I just didn’t know what kind of interesting I was signing up for.
My job title was Junior Steward. Basically, I brought people towels shaped like swans and remembered that the woman in Cabin 847 wanted her chamomile tea at seven sharp. Simple stuff. The Celestine Duchess ran a circuit — Southampton to the Azores, three days at sea each way — and after a few weeks, the routine felt like muscle memory. Wake up, press uniform, smile, serve, sleep. Repeat.
The ship had twelve decks. I knew every one of them.
That’s what made it strange when Marco — a senior steward, Spanish, had worked the route for four years — mentioned Deck 13 in passing one night. We were in the crew mess, about half eleven, both exhausted.
“Did you finish the turndowns on Thirteen?” he asked, not looking up from his coffee.
I laughed. “There is no Thirteen.”
He looked at me then. Just for a second. Something moved behind his eyes — not quite fear, but close to it, like a door almost opening. Then he shrugged. “You’re right. I’m tired. Forget it.”
I forgot it. For about two weeks.
Looking back, I realize the signs were there before that conversation. I just wasn’t paying attention.
It started with the manifest. Every voyage, Passenger Services printed a full guest list — names, cabin numbers, dietary requirements. I used it to personalise service. Little touches. Remember someone’s anniversary, upgrade their fruit basket. Standard stuff. But on our third crossing, I noticed a name I didn’t recognise alongside a cabin number that didn’t match our deck layout. Cabin 13-04. Occupant: Hargreaves, E. No first name. No dietary notes. No embarkation port listed.
I assumed it was a data entry error. Obviously. I flagged it with Passenger Services and the woman at the desk — Karen, mid-forties, never without her reading glasses on a chain — just glanced at it and said, “Don’t worry about that one.” Then she went back to her spreadsheet.
I didn’t push it. I didn’t want to seem difficult this early in my contract.
The second thing happened close to midnight on a Wednesday, mid-Atlantic. I was doing a late beverage run on Deck 8 when I heard footsteps from above. Steady, unhurried footsteps, walking back and forth. Which shouldn’t have bothered me — ships are full of people, obviously — except the space directly above Deck 8 on the Celestine Duchess is a maintenance crawlway. Not a passenger area. Not a crew area. A crawlway you’d have to be deliberately trying to access to find.
I stood there in the corridor with a tray of sparkling water and listened to someone pace, slowly, for almost four minutes.
Maybe I was just paranoid. I told myself it was pipes. The ocean does strange things to sound, Marco always said. I let it go.
I should have trusted my instincts. I know that now.
The third thing I couldn’t explain away.
I was restocking the linen cupboard on Deck 10 when a passenger stepped out of a door at the far end of the corridor. An older man, very pale, in a dinner jacket that looked like it belonged to a different decade — wide lapels, slightly yellowed at the collar. He walked slowly, deliberately, like someone who wasn’t in any hurry because they had nowhere to be. He turned and looked at me.
His eyes opened wider than they should have. Not dramatically. Just — fractionally too wide. The way a face looks when the muscles underneath aren’t quite responding correctly. He smiled, and I felt my heart sink straight through the floor, because that smile was assembled, like he’d seen smiling done and was having a go.
I looked away. When I looked back, he was gone.
I walked to the end of that corridor. The door he’d come from — I checked the number. Cross-referenced it with my layout sheet, which I’d started carrying everywhere by that point. The cabin didn’t exist on any blueprint I had access to.
I went to the Chief Purser that night. She was a tall Scottish woman named Diane, efficient, no-nonsense. I explained everything — the manifest entry, the footsteps, the man. She listened with her hands folded on her desk.
Then she said, very quietly: “How long have you been with us?”
“Two months,” I said.
She nodded. “The ocean has its own rules out here. International waters. You understand? Different laws. Different — ” She paused. “Different arrangements.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, choosing each word carefully, “that some guests book passage through channels we don’t manage directly. And some guests — ” another pause — “don’t disembark with the others. I’d strongly suggest you stop looking into Cabin 13-04, finish your contract, and request a land-based transfer in the spring.”
She smiled. It reached her eyes perfectly. I almost wished it hadn’t.
I’ll never forget the last morning of that crossing. Southampton in sight, pale November light on the water, passengers crowding the upper deck with their phones out. I counted them as they filed off the gangway. I don’t know why. Just felt compelled to.
I counted one more than the manifest listed.
He was near the back of the queue. Dinner jacket. Wide eyes. He turned and looked up at me leaning on the rail, and that assembled smile spread across his face like something spilled.
Then he walked into the crowd on the dock, and I lost him.
I transferred to shore operations in February. I still work for the company — logistics, Southampton terminal, nothing that involves boats. My friends think it’s a strange choice. I mean, the pay’s worse.
To this day, I still count people. In queues, in restaurants, getting off trains. I can’t help it. I just need to know the numbers add up.
They usually do.
Usually.
