Page 18 of Old Girls on Deck

‘We’d be delighted,’ I said with a winning smile.

‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Diana muttered, ‘I bet one of us comes away with some sort of injury.’

‘Oh gosh, does that mean I have to go and put some make-up on?’ I said as we watched him walking away.

He really was very attractive, there was hardly a woman in the room that didn’t turn to look at him. If I hadn’t been married, I could easily have developed a bit of a crush.

‘You can if you want to,’ Diana said. She pulled a face. ‘This maple syrup really is too sweet and a bit odd. I think I’ll get something else.’

She wandered off and returned after a few minutes with a huge, iced doughnut complete with sprinkles.

‘And that’s not too sweet?’ I asked.

‘It’s supposed to be. Bacon isn’t,’ Diana replied.

The activity kitchen was a large room somewhere on deck 3, which took some finding. Once there, we found the room already full of other shipmates who were as eager as we were to turn melons into sharks or tomatoes into water lilies.

We found some empty places at the far end of a bench and a moment later I was delighted to see Evelyn coming in. I waved at her and beckoned her over to sit next to us.

Our tutor – Juan – was a senior pastry chef, and he was obviously very keen to get going. And considering he probably had hundreds of scones to prepare for the afternoon tea, not to mention thousands of canapés and desserts to concoct, I couldn’t blame him.

Behind him on a table were some examples of his work which were exquisite: a flock of swans carved from apples on a green jelly lake, a watermelon carved into an elaborate rose, and a crab made from oranges with wobbling, stick-on cartoon eyes. That was a bit of a cheat, the three of us agreed. I mean who would have those to hand in a fruit carving emergency?

Apparently, we were going to make an owl out of two apples.

‘We will make decorations for your dinner tables that will amuse and delight your friends,’ Juan promised, nodding confidently under his towering chef’s hat.

‘I did this before, years ago,’ Diana whispered.

‘I don’t remember seeing any evidence,’ I hissed back, ‘your idea of amusing and delightful was buying paper napkins instead of tearing off sheets of kitchen roll. Have you done this before, Evelyn?’

Evelyn had wisely pushed the sleeves of her cashmere cardigan out of the way and was perched on her stool, bright-eyed with excitement.

‘I have,’ she said, ‘but I still can’t get it right. As you will see.’

No sooner had we picked up our knives, having listened to the warnings from Juan about how knives were sharp and could cut if we weren’t careful (who knew?) than Raphaël appeared at my side, camera at the ready.

‘Take no notice of me,’ he said in a low, rather intimate tone, ‘really. I am invisible.’

Well of course he wasn’t, and the little waft of his aftershave – which was delightful – didn’t actually help. Diana and I giggled like a couple of schoolgirls, and we couldn’t seem to follow the simplest instructions.

I plunged my knife into the apple and sawed bits off it, trying to copy what Juan was doing at the other end of the bench. It looked pretty easy, but I could feel myself starting to sweat with nerves as I heard the camera clicking away next to me.

‘And a piece of carrot for the beak,’ Juan hollered over the noise of several women in hysterics, ‘there will be a prize for the best carving.’

Diana fussed around with her apple owl and just as Raphaël was taking a picture, it fell over and the head rolled onto the floor, which made her splutter with laughter. I looked up, my hand over my mouth and saw him looking at her with a puzzled expression.

I, meanwhile, had mangled my apple in frustration with a steak tenderiser I had found in a drawer, making Evelyn chuckle, and was onto the next project which was a teddy bear made from an orange. We soldiered on gamely while one woman in patchwork Bermuda shorts sat at the side, sulking and having a plaster put on her finger, having not sufficiently heeded the health and safety warnings.

‘And now, fill the baskets with the segments of orange,’ Juan shouted a few minutes later from his end of the bench.

‘Rats, I’ve eaten those,’ I muttered, looking around guiltily. ‘He should have said earlier. Perhaps I could collect up the bits of my dismembered apple owl and stuff that in?’

‘Well, you won’t get a prize,’ Diana said.

‘Nor will you, by the looks of that orange,’ I said, ‘it’s not exactly amusing and delightful, is it?’

‘I shall practise at home. You wait, the next time you come round for dinner I will amuse and delight you by serving up salad in a melon shark.’