“I mean, my clients were all on holiday and I was working pretty much twenty-four-seven. And I was responsible for everything. If it went wrong, I had to fix it. If it went right, it was part of the seamless fabric of the tour. I didn’t get credit—not that that’s why I did the job—but ‘perfect’ was the benchmark, you know?”

“I do, yes.”

“Is that how you felt about your job in finance.”

“To a degree. It was a self-imposed perfection, mostly. Of course, in finance, a mistake can mean millions lost, but I was driven to go above and beyond what was expected—self-imposed and completely unsustainable. I was not my best self then.”

It surprised me to learn we’d shared similar experiences in such vastly different jobs. Of course, James had had a career in finance and being a tour manager was not the kind of job you made a career out of. Well, not for me anyway.

I could have stuck it out a few more years if it hadn’t meant selling off a piece of my soul on a regular basis—every time I said goodbye to a dear friend not knowing when I’d see them again, or smiled at a client who was an utter troll, or fended off unwanted advances from certain vendors, or worked twenty-hour days through a head cold or the flu, hiding my misery from my clients with medicine and makeup.

“When I moved home and went back to teaching, it felt right for me.”

“From how you talk about it, it seems like teaching is your passion.”

“In a way, yes. I enjoy working with the kids, especially those lightbulb moments when you can see that something has clicked for them, or has resonated somehow. They’re quite incredible people—the little ratbags,” I added affectionately. “They can be exhausting at times, of course—such a diverse group, all with their foibles and insecurities, their dreams—but on the whole, they’re the reason I stay with it.

“And, of course, there are parts I endure, like the endless paperwork, but that’s the same for every job, right?” Then I realised what I’d said and who I’d said it to. “Except maybe yours.”

He smiled a wry smile. “You’d be surprised, I think.”

“Oh, really?”

“Two words—customs forms.” I made a face and he smiled, his eyes doing that sexy crinkly thing. “Exactly,” he added.

I was sure that James had a team of people employed to handle such mundanities as customs forms, but it wouldn’t have always been that way. I knew that his success was the result of twenty years’ hard work.

Twenty years—geez. Twenty years ago, I was in high school. I was one of those little ratbags who asked a million questions and had ballsy dreams about conquering the world.

James pulled me from my thoughts with another question. “So, with your work, the joy of the lightbulb moment, as you say, it’s something you could do from almost anywhere, yes?”

Was he just making conversation, or was he asking because he wanted me to move to London? I’d thought about it, moving back to London—of course I had. If James and I ended up together, one of us would eventually move, right? And yes, he travelled a lot, but we’d still want to share a home base—a home—and James certainly had a nice one of those.