I waved her away dismissively. ‘Oh, there were loads of those, too. But I could probably spin a couple out if I’m stuck for material,’ I added with a grin, as she blanched at me.

It was Elliot who gave me the idea, when I bumped into him in Sydney, a year ago last December. That night was the start of something new and beautiful between us, and I’m delighted to announce that we’re still together.

At least, we’re together as a couple. We’re not together literally, because I’m now back in the UK sans visa and he’s on the other side of the world in Australia. I could move over there if I married him. But that would mean one of us asking.

I’m slightly scared of him asking.

I love Elliot so much, but, when we were sixteen, my feelings for him were all-encompassing. He meant everything to me.

The love I feel for him now is not as powerful, and I’m worried that it’s because I’ve become jaded over the years. Have I had too many relationships to believe in happy ever after?

Maybe I’ve just grown up. Maybe love as an adult can never compare to that of a teenager.

Or maybe something is missing. And maybe there’s a chance that I can get this something back…

That night we met up again, Elliot put forward the tongue-in-cheek notion that perhaps I needed to hunt down all of the men I’ve ever loved to ask for their pieces of my heart back. Before I left Australia, he brought up the idea again, but this time he was serious. He knows that I’m struggling to commit to him wholeheartedly, but he believes that, if I use this time apart from him to revisit the past, I might be able to make more sense of the here and now. He suggested that I write about all of my encounters, and then he came up with another genius idea: if I could get a book deal, my time and travels would be funded in the form of an advance.

I should point out here that my boyfriend is not the jealous type. This was one of the first questions Sara asked when I put the idea to her back in February.

She also said that I needed to blog about my reunions and raise my profile before she’d consider approaching publishers, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three months.

My readers have joined me on voyages to South Africa (David), Iceland (Olli), Spain (Jorge) and Brazil (Gabriel), and, of course, I’ve also written about how Elliot and I rekindled our relationship in Australia. I’m yet to meet up with Dillon in Ireland, Freddie in Norway, Seth in Canada and Beau, Felix, Liam and Vince here in the UK.