The Deck Seventeen Club

It was the most exclusive ship in the harbour. Celebrities, royalty and Z-list influencers paid tens of thousands of dollars for passage on it. Yet deck seventeen was cordoned off for a secret few who paid nothing, known amongst the crew as the Deck Seventeen Club.

Their existence became known while the ship was visiting the islands dotted around the Mediterranean. Those in balcony cabins thought they were the special ones. They paid a few thousand extra for those upgrades, completely unaware that there was a secret deck that nobody without a turquoise coloured card could access.

The Deck Seventeen Club had their own restaurants, bars, waiters, butlers, pools and slightly nicer sun-loungers than the other passengers. Theirs were padded with a little pillow attached to the top, adorned with a shimmering gold fleur-de-lis. Everyone else's was nice enough, but a little rigid and uncomfortable if you lay there too long.

Clive, who was irritated at the price he was charged for foie gras and truffles in Ajaccio the previous day, recalled that someone had skipped the queue for the tender boat and became irritated by that instead. Accompanied by a man in top hat and tails, this unassuming woman in a shabby looking pair of ripped jeans and a red tank top had quietly shuffled past all the other passengers, saying nothing and taking the first tender boat off the ship all to herself. Once in Olbia she had disappeared from sight. As they were preparing to sail out of Olbia again, Clive, who was standing on deck sixteen watching the sunset, had noticed her return to the ship in her own private tender again. He had to know who she was and why she was so important, so he headed for the elevator she was likely to take to her own deck.

He waited to see which floor she chose. There was no number above the elevator indicating her choice, just an arrow. The arrow pointed up, up, up. It continued past his floor, sixteen, the top floor he thought, and kept going. How could that be? He pressed the call button himself.

Then a moment later, the arrow pointed down, and the doors opened for him. He had missed her. The elevator had skipped his request entirely and prioritised her. The nerve! He entered the elevator and looked for button seventeen. There wasn't one. So, he tried the stairs instead. The stairs leading up from deck sixteen were sealed off and only accessible with a key card, which he did not have.

In fact, when he asked some other passengers, a great many others, none of them knew anything about decks seventeen but had noticed the same things he had.

So, the whispers began about the deck none of them could access. There were people jumping queues. Somebody said they had seen crates of the finest caviar being loaded onto the ship in Mallorca but it was never on the menu. There were even murmurs of the ship's jewellery store being closed to the public while certain passengers were allowed inside, accompanied by the man in top hat and tails and simply given items from the display units.

Clive and the other passengers realised that there was a whole other world, more luxurious than the elegance and splendour they had thought they paid top dollar for, that they could not access. When asked, the staff denied all knowledge of it. Nobody knew anything about this turquoise key card, how to get to deck seventeen, who was in there or how to become part of the Deck Seventeen Club.