Chapter 2 Book 5 of the CRUISE SHIP CRIME INVESTIGATORS CSCI can certainly be read alone. It is available from Amazon on Kindle or Paperback and the Audiobook is in the publishing process, and Whispersync has been applied for.
Written by Stuart St Paul, who after 50 years working at the top end of movie and TV, he has changed from screenplays to novels, which explains their fast page-turning pace.
Life has never been kind to Violet. This is her one big chance, and she is going to take it even if confusion and damage will almost certainly be left in her wake. No two mental health problems are the same. How Violet became agoraphobic is something you might understand by the end, but what the COVID-19 lockdown did for her, someone already locked down was amazing. For the first time people on television were talking to her, they shared her problem, she felt someone cared. For the first time, from her only window, she could see something, and something non-threatening; ships. These ships, parked in the bay became her friends. She felt so close to them that when the first one left she was heartbroken. She had learned every detail of that ship as if she knew it like a sister. She knew the deck plans, the facilities, and she knew she could live inside without ever seeing the sky. For her, it was time to venture out, to meet her friend the ship. But as much as she was to force herself to get out and discover life, it is possible she should never have ever been allowed to leave the secure unit she inhabited for so many years. Violet is ready to discover a life she never had, a life beyond that inside her head. The time has to be now or never, while she is young enough because sixty is not too old. She is not old. She is ready for the world if the world is ready for her.COVID-19 knocked holes into the cruise industry’s image. Now they have Violet. She is a nuisance and maybe on the verge of being dangerous to other guests, but so far she has committed no crime. The unpredictable woman has booked a very long cruise; The Canaries, onto the Baltic then an Atlantic Crossing into the Caribbean Season. They need her monitored with kid gloves and they don't have the staff. CSCI Cruise Ship Crime Investigators find themselves charged with the strangest contract yet, but it may be the most testing.
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No two mental health problems are the same.
How Violet became vulnerable and agoraphobic is something you might understand by the end.
How she made it onto a cruise is easier to comprehend.
Unless you are one of her medical team.
What the Covid-19 lockdown did for her,
someone whose life was already locked down,
no analyst could ever have predicted.
For the first time, it seemed people on television were talking to her.
They shared her internment, and she felt others cared.
From the only window of her second floor apartment,
the normally empty bay, played host to six, non-threatening, stationary ships.
Parked in the distance, they seemed small,
but were apparently full of crew not permitted to leave.
They were not allowed to come ashore or allowed to go home.
Violet had been interned like that in a locked hospital for 40 years,
before being certified able to live alone in her own apartment.
It took a long time to prove she was capable of self-medicating and could be trusted.
Like her, the ship's crew were kept secure.
Researching them on the web, Violet discovered most crew work a nine-month shift,
then have three months off.
She wondered where they went in their time off,
and how they coped being away from normality.
She would stand for hours gazing out to sea,
studying them, imagining their small crew cabins low down.
Violet felt a synergy with the crew, and she felt calm.
When she had been taken out into the world,
she experienced panic attacks, felt dizzy, and her legs were known to buckle.
Her exposure therapy was not going well.
Her nurse practitioner, who was trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT,
had tried taking her to a few places which Violet had only previously seen on television.
She found it hard to go above the second floor in any building,
hated most stairs, and could not go into an elevator with people other than her trusted aides.
That was something she discovered on an exposure visit to the local shopping mall.
She hated it, and developed a panic attack.
From what she can remember, shopping was never like that before her hospital sentence,
but her past life was grey.
The furthest her nurse had got her so far was to the local cinema.
Even then, Violet had to sit on the end of a row and near the emergency exit.
The team that managed her at the hospital juggled between trying to get her back into society
and watching to see if she should be out at all.
However, they had few hospital beds, and home care had become essential.
Violet relied on her visiting team monitoring her moods and medication.
Drugs made her drowsy, and she would often reduce her dose further than she should,
or forget whether she had taken any of her tablets, or how many.
She was nothing like the ship's crew.
Her case was complex, but Violet wanted out of that 40-year lockdown
in an institution just as the rest of the population was wanting out now.
For the rest of the public, being out was being talked about on radio and television.
What they had been missing, and how life might restart, were discussed as projects.
The gradual reintroduction to society was a programme she might follow with the help of daytime TV.
Violet could see that having just turned 60, her time on the planet was running out.
She felt convinced by the media panels and commentators that at 60,
she was still a woman with a lot to offer, that she should get out and enjoy life.
Many loose women had said so.
Even a TV exercise programme with Joe Wicks had replaced her lockdown physiotherapy.
Physio was essential to stabilise her sleep patterns,
and had helped with racing thoughts and talkativeness.
The apartment has no memorabilia, no pictures of family, no postcards,
just junk mail she reads from front to back,
and an unopened envelope addressed to her, propped on her windowsill.
From her window, Violet debated a possible new norm, and the ships agreed.
They spoke to her.
She felt so close to them that when the first one left, she was heartbroken.
She had learned every detail of that ship as if she knew it, like the sister she never had.
Or did she have a sister?
Did she have any family?
People other than those dressed in white who often restrained her had given up on her years ago.
Had that ship given up on her?
It couldn't.
People had given up on her all her life.
All she knew was people dressed in white, just like the ship's crew.
Why did it leave her?
Cruising was still banned.
It had nowhere to go.
She researched the deck plans, crew, facilities,
and she was sure she could live there if she could find it.
A view of the sea would be no different from that ship to what she had now.
In her mind, she had already discovered safe places to hide away from others,
and she could stay in her cabin and enjoy the glory of room service,
which sounded better than the service she had in her drab hospital room.
She even found plans not generally seen by guests,
and knew how to get around the crew spaces and use doors for work access.
Surely, all the time she had invested was not being thrown in her face by a ship that had walked out on her.
The world began to unlock as the threat of the virus reduced.
People were allowed out, but her other ship stayed loyal.
Just her favourite one had vanished.
When the other vessels did eventually begin to leave,
she had to take the medication she so often skipped whilst confined to her current safe space.
Each day, she looked out to see if they would return.
They didn't.
For the months of lockdown, she had not even been on her accompanied exposure trips.
Exposure and ship life were just a dream.
She even found old reruns of Love Boat,
which she felt must have been as old and outdated as the hospital she escaped from.
So when the announcement came that cruising was to restart, she felt strangely panicked.
Where will her ship be going?
Maybe she could find her ship, and it could be her new protector.
Maybe she could be a staff member and hide down below decks.
She studied the brochure and her bank account to see if she had enough money to stay on for nine months, a full shift.
More importantly, she counted the stockpile of drugs she had accumulated over the years as she forgot or skipped a dose.
She would certainly need more.
Neither her carer nor her nurse felt her plans rational,
but they must have eventually taken her seriously and realized it might be more than just a dream.
Maybe one of them hoped to travel with her.
Violet was excited that for once they were responding to her making a decision about her own life,
a feeling she had only had once before when her many requests for her own personal living space with a window were heard.
A dedicated psychiatric nurse arrived, only for her to be told that any idea of a cruise was ridiculous and Violet should forget it.
Her computer was confiscated on the grounds that social media was further developing an unreal world
and increasing her inability to go out and mix freely in the local community.
She had to integrate with those around her before she could consider any holiday.
Violet knew better.
She sensed trouble.
She had seen their moves before.
The big mistake many people make, including medical people, is that they think because you have a mental problem,
you are not smart, and that was not her case.
Violet knew they were preparing for her to be interned again, albeit for her own safety.
If it wasn't for cutbacks, she would have been taken away rather than her computer.
That will now happen as soon as they can find a bed.
That won't happen.
Not if I can find a bed on my ship, Violet thinks.
But she knows she has little time.
When left alone she made herself walk to the local shops,
overcoming the many times when she was forced to press herself into a wall to stay standing and jumping at loud noises and traffic.
She applied for a passport, using the fast service offered by her post office.
Twice before, she had boldly used the post office on her own.
She rang a cruise company direct,
Violet is anything but stupid,
and was offered a double cabin with a sea view at a better price than she expected to pay for a single cabin.
Given the reduced capacity the ship had to sail with,
it was being advertised as a dating cruise, with many singles travelling.
It sounded even more perfect.
The repositioning cruise was to begin in Southampton and cross the Atlantic for the Caribbean season.
At some point she would run out of funds, but maybe by then the ship would be paying her a salary.
None of her medical team would stop her.
She would fight if she had to.
To her, fighting was kicking and punching and screaming.
They knew that, but they might not be prepared for it.
All she had to do was transfer her money to a cash card and get her passport in time to escape.
A cash card should also mean she leaves no trace of where she has gone.
