The Woman in Cabin 10

“Between the sulfur-yellow pools of streetlight, they were gray and shadowed, and a cold wind blew discarded papers against my legs, leaves and rubbish gusting in the gutters. I should have felt afraid–a thirty-two year old woman, clearly wearing pajamas, wandering the streets in the small hours. But I felt safer out here than I did in my small flat. Out here, someone would hear you cry.”

After insomnia keeps Lo from sleeping, she wanders the streets of London and reflects on the feeling of being safe outdoors; this trauma begins her fear of enclosed spaces.  

“I love ports. I love the smell of tar and sea air, and the scream of the gulls […] Airports say work and security checks and delays. Ports say…I don’t know. Something completely different. Escape, maybe.” 

As Lo arrives at the port preparing to take off on her cruise, she reflects on the pleasure of being on the sea. Her idea of the port as escape, however, is deeply ironic, given her later experiences aboard the Aurora. 

“The whole flight was illuminated by an eye-watering chandelier, suffusing the place with tiny splashes of light that reminded me of nothing so much as the sun glinting off the sea on a summer’s day. It was slightly nauseating–not in a social-conscious sort of way, although if you thought about it too hard, that too. But more in disorientation–the way the crystals acted like a prism […] dazzling you, throwing you off balance…” 

Lo walks onto the Aurora and into the area of the Great Staircase, which she describes in this scene. The disorientation of the décor foreshadows the intentional manipulation and disorientation of the ship’s owner, Richard Bullmer.

“White. White. Everything was white. The pale wood floor. The white velvet sofa. The long raw-silk curtains. The flawless walls. It was spectacularly impractical for a public vessel–deliberately so, I had to assume.” 

This is Lo's first impression of the lounge of the Aurora, and she is amazed by the dazzling white of the décor. White is a motif throughout the novel that symbolizes both luxury and illusion. 

“I don’t know what woke me up–only that I shot into consciousness as if someone had stabbed me in the heart with a syringe of adrenaline […] You’re fine, I told myself, You’re completely safe. We’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean–no one can get in or away. It’s about the safest place you could be.”

In this moment, Lo wakes up from noises coming from Cabin 10. The irony of this moment, of course, is that Lo is not safe at all aboard the Aurora. She is in fact the only witness to a murder, which will later lead to her own imprisonment. 

“I was turning the page when I heard the sound of something else, something that barely registered above the sound of the engine and the slap of the waves, a sound so soft that the scrape of paper against paper almost drowned it out. It was the noise of the veranda door in the next cabin sliding gently open. I held my breath straining to hear. And then there was a splash. Not a small splash. No, this was a big splash. The kind of splash made by a body hitting water.”

After Lo wakes with a start, she hears the sound of a body being thrown overboard. This moment sparks all future conflict and turmoil in the novel because Lo refuses to dismiss what she has heard. 

“Maybe he's right, the nasty little voice in my head whispered. Pictures flitted across my mind's eye–me, cowering in the shower because of a door blowing shut in the wind. Defending myself against a nonexistent intruder by attacking Judah. Are you completely sure? You're not exactly the most reliable witness. And at the end of the day, what did you actually see?”

Lo doubts herself after speaking with Nilsson about her story from the night before. Her self-doubt stems from her own mental health problems. In this section, Lo doubts her own credibility as a narrator, something that Ware plays with throughout the book. 

“But I couldn’t speak. I could only gulp, staring down at his outstretched hand, in the pale latex catering glove, while the blood hissed in my ears…” 

Lo experiences a severe flashback to her burglary in this moment aboard the ship, while she is meeting with the staff to try to find the missing girl in Cabin 10. This quote connects the trauma of the burglary with the trauma that has and will occur aboard the Aurora.

“I thought what it must have been like to be a female journalist in that generation, clawing your way up through the ranks of the old-boy's network. It was hard enough now. Maybe it wasn't Tina's fault she couldn't take every other woman in the office with her.” 

In this section, Lo reflects on Tina's career, and the stories she has heard about Tina’s ruthlessness and cruelty to other young women. Lo questions whether Tina should be blamed, when she is part of a larger system of male authority and power. 

“I went through to the main bedroom, opening drawers one after another, hunting under chairs. Where was it? Where was it? But I knew the answer, even as I sank to the bed, head in my hands. It was gone. The tube of mascara–my one link to the missing girl–was gone.” 

In this moment, Lo realizes that someone has taken the mascara that was the only proof she had that a woman had been staying in Cabin 10. This marks the beginning of her suspicions about the nefarious activity going on aboard the ship.

“My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we're no good, that if we don't make this promotion or ace that exam we'll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that's true. Maybe mine just have louder voices.” 

In this section, Nilsson has just doubted Lo's credibility because she takes antidepressants. Lo reflects on her mental health history, and the struggle she has had with both anxiety and depression. 

“Even in cases of well-documented disappearances, things get brushed under the carpet. Without a clear police jurisdiction to take control, the investigation is too often left to the onboard security services, who’re employed by the cruise liner and can’t afford to ruffle feathers, even if they wanted to.” 

Lo is reflecting in this moment on her experience writing about other cruise line disappearances, and the strange circumstances of crimes committed in international waters. This information will become relevant later, when Lo realizes a murder has in fact been committed, and she has no one to call for help. 

“‘I know what it’s like,’ I said, as he opened the door. ‘Don’t you see? I know what she must have felt like, when someone came for her in the middle of the night. That’s why I have to find out who did this to her.’” 

Lo makes it clear in this passage, when she speaks to Ben Howard about her experiences aboard the Aurora, what her motivations are for continuing to investigate this murder. Lo is deeply connected to the victim, because they have both experienced the same kind of fear. 

“I dreamed of the girl, drifting miles below us in the cold, sunless depths of the North Sea. I dreamed of her laughing eyes white and bloated with salt water, and of her soft skin, wrinkled and sloughing, of her T-shirt ripped by jagged rocks and disintegrating into rags.”

Here, Lo describes a dream, in which her vivid images of the missing woman as she was when alive are disturbed by the process of her decaying underwater. This humanizes the missing woman, making her death more tangible for the reader. 

“The dark grey waves stretched out like a desert–mile upon mile, stretching to the horizon, no sign of land of any kind, nor even a ship. I shut my eyes, seeing the fruitless whirling of the Internet search engine icon. There was literally no way of calling for help.”

Lo’s isolation and fear aboard the ship, as well as her entrapment both on board and within the Aurora, are described in this passage, which link the North Sea and a vast, uninhabited desert. In this passage, Lo is recovering from a threatening message after her spa treatment by talking to Ben about the experience. 

“‘Good Lord,’ Lars said. He was openly grinning now, not even trying to hide his disbelief. ‘It’s like something out of a novel.’ Was he deliberately trying to undermine my account, throw me off-balance?” 

As Lo attempts to tell Richard her experience with the woman in Cabin 10, she is mocked by Lars, who she believes questions her account. This calls back to issues of masculinity and authority in the novel, as well as Lo’s status as a potentially unreliable narrator. 

“[…] as I ran back through his words, I realized he hadn’t promised anything; in fact, he hadn’t really said anything that could be quoted out of context as unqualified support for my story. There had been a lot of if this is true… and if what you say… nothing very concrete, when you came down to it.”

In this passage, Lo is reflecting on her conversation with Bullmer about the murder. She realizes that despite Bullmer making her feel heard in the moment, he really said nothing of any significance. This is the first indication that he might be a manipulative, self-serving character.

“Now I understood. All the locks and bolts and DO NOT DISTURB signs in the world wouldn’t do any good on my cabin door, not when the balcony offered a clear route to anyone with access to the empty room, and enough upper body strength to pull themselves over. My room was not safe, and never had been.”(

Here, Lo realizes after her phone is stolen out of her bedroom while she is in the bath that her room has never been safe from intruders. This illusion of safety is troubling, particularly after the trauma of her break-in. 

“There was nothing I could do. I lay there in the impenetrable darkness for what felt like hours but might have been days, or minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness, hoping each time I opened my eyes to see something, even just a line of light in the corridor, something that would prove that I was really here, that I really existed and wasn’t just lost in some hell of my imagining.” 

In this scene, Lo is in bed in the cell that the woman in Cabin 10 has created for her in the bottom of the ship. She prays for some connection to the real world, and worries about her mental health, wondering if she has created this world from the dark places in her mind. 

“‘When Richard’s got Anne’s money–what do you think his next move will be? Making himself safe.’ ‘Shut up! You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s a good man. He’s in love with me.’ I stood up, level with her. Our eyes locked, our faces just inches apart in the tiny space. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it,’ I said.” 

Here, Lo and Carrie argue over Carrie’s safety, and Richard’s motivations. It is clear that Carrie is acting on Richard’s behalf out of love, but Lo doubts whether his love will save Carrie after this incident is over. 

“‘My mum used to call me Tigger,’ she said. ‘She used to say, you’re like Tigger, you are, no matter how hard you fall, you always bounce back.’” 

Carrie is talking to Lo in this scene. The women bond over a shared love for Winnie the Pooh, and Carrie talks about her mother’s belief in her resilience. This is particularly poignant given what Carrie has done for the sake of love, and the danger she is in. The Tigger reference will also be the clue for who has given Lo the money at the end of the story. 

“But something seemed wrong and after a few minutes I realized what it was. The lights were not to the east but to the north. What I could see was not dawn but the eerie green and gold streaks of the northern lights. The realization made me laugh–a bitter, mirthless choke...What was it Richard had said? Everyone should see the northern lights before they died. Well, now I had. But it just didn't seem that important anymore.” 

This is one of the final scenes in the novel, as Lo escapes from the ship and runs into the hills of the Norwegian fjords. She sees the northern lights, and mocks their significance, having recognized through this life-changing battle with life and death that there are more important things than a travel bucket list. 

“‘What,’ I demanded, ‘you don't believe me? You don't think people can be sucked into doing something out of fear, or inability to see any other way out?’” 

In this final chapter of the novel, Lo talks to Judah about the reasons Carrie kept her imprisoned. She reflects on the powerful nature of abusive relationships, and how they can force women to act against their better judgment or moral compass, because of their fear and the feeling that there are no other options.