‘Did you ever think you’d get mad at Delphine for reading?’ Lu asked me.

It was a good question. The answer is, a year ago, I would have jumped for six months worth of joy.

It’s been six months now. Alongside the diving Delphine rolls outside to do, reading is where it’s at for her. She has her head stuck the iPad, reading. All the freaking time.

Delph likes fan-fiction. So we laugh she is reading soft porn. She swears she isn’t. I don’t think she is either, but I can’t be completely sure. She won’t show me – so I’m guessing.

Fan-fiction are stories written by fans of a particular book. For Harry Potter, there’s a whole host of Harry Potter spin-off books. Armies of fans will continue the story, often with alternative endings. Hermione ends up with Draco. Harry and Cho Chang. Ron and Professor McGonagall. One step too far I know. Still, for fan fiction, the imagination can go anywhere. Perhaps this is what Delph is so caught up in. The idea that there are no limits.

She has constructed herself a nice nest in the front cabin for this purpose. The 12v fan blows on her legs, while she sits underneath the opened hatches. No hot sunshine pouring in either, since we put the awning up on the bow of Quest. It’s the one we had made with A&F sails in Nelson’s Quay when we first arrived in Antigua. Amazingly good quality. Not cheap. We’ve kept it in the stern shower for years. The old ‘too nice to use’ trick.

We’re finally getting good use of it now. All in all, it’s been very comfortable for Delph – in the last months of hurricane season, sitting under the shade with the fan on her legs. Some might even say a little too comfortable.

Now the weather is finally shifting, I feel like calling in some changes. Jack called the first one in fact and took Quest sailing yesterday. Shock, horror, we can still move! Quest sailed like she’d been waiting at the front door with her lead in her mouth. We mixed sailing and diving too – since we are in Bonaire. We sailed to the Hilma Hooker wreck again, grabbed the mooring, and went down with our dive tanks.

We sailed home the long way in the afternoon; around the little island, Klein Bonaire, adjacent to Bonaire. We were following Patrice, who’d come to dive the adjacent mooring. By the time he shot past us in Astra, his Southerly 49, he was starting to lean over as though he was in a regatta. We had to pinch the wind in order to sail back. It was a pleasure with all that flat water in the lee of Bonaire.

Where was Delph when the three of us were outside, Quest nicely heeled over, enjoying the sun on our noses? She was reading in the front cabin. That fan-fiction is some powerful, anti-seasick draw. What is Hermione up to?