Carstairs was a yacht broker who worked out of an air-conditioned office in London’s Mayfair. His clients were not the small-boat sailors who were my bread and butter, but rather the hyper-rich who could afford professional skippers at the helm, naked starlets on the foredeck, and stroll-on, stroll-off berths in Monte Carlo. Our yard’s normal business was much too paltry for Carstairs’s expensive trade, but that year Joanna and I happened to have a great steel-hulled sloop for sale and, though at over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Stormchild was at the very upper range of our stock, she barely scraped in at the slum end of Harry’s business. “I’ve got a likely client who wants to look at the beast tomorrow,” he told me in his champagne and caviar accent. “Is that all right with you?”

I hesitated before answering. Of late, as our life returned to normal, Joanna and I had discussed buying Stormchild for ourselves. We had dreamed of selling our house, hiring a manager to look after the yard, then sailing away to far white beaches and exotic harbors. Stormchild would have been the perfect boat to make those dreams come true, but the trouble was they were only dreams, not plans, and I knew we were not ready to make the change, just as I knew I could not pass up a proper offer for the big steel boat. “Stormchild’s still here,” I reluctantly told Carstairs, “and the yard’s open from eight until six, so help yourself to a viewing. You can get Stormchild’s keys from my foreman. His name’s Billy and I’ll make sure he puts some heat into the boat.”