“Do you know why they’re called board games?” I asked James, a cheeky smile on my face. He shook his head. “Because they’re boring. Get it? Bored games.” I waggled my eyebrows and grinned at him, and he smiled one of those half-smiles which isn’t really a smile.

Maybe he just was tired—it had been a long day—but whatever the reason for his less-than-enthusiastic response to my pun, my inner voice conjured the most unhelpful thought possible. Josh would have laughed at that. I told it to shut up.

As James and I snuck out to avoid the “bored games”, I grabbed an opened, but mostly full, bottle of red wine from the bar, adding thievery to my resume. I checked the label as we walked hand in hand to our cabin. It was a pinot noir and I applauded my good luck at snagging my favourite red varietal.

“You are very naughty,” James teased, as he opened our cabin door. I slipped into the room past him and plopped down on the bed, grinning. “You know, they would have just given you the bottle if you’d asked. Maybe glasses too.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” I asked. I may have already been a little tipsy from the wine we’d had at dinner. “There must be glasses in here.” I climbed off the bed—ungracefully, I’m sure—and started foraging in our tiny cabin. It only took a few moments to locate the tea and coffee making paraphernalia, and I grabbed the two mugs one-handed, holding them aloft. “See? Perfect.”

His response was that enigmatic smile he gave me sometimes, the one that I hoped meant, “you are very sexy and utterly charming”. I set about pouring some of my ill-gotten spoils and handed a mug of the pinot to James. He took it carefully and had a sip.

“Probably not the best way to enjoy this, but it isn’t bad,” he said. When I took a sip, I thought it was delicious. He sat on the rumpled bed and made a nest of pillows for us to lean against. I climbed on and sat beside him and we drank from our mugs of wine in silence.

And as often happens when it’s all too quiet and I am wondering what the other person is thinking, I did something stupid. I let myself pore over the previous evening. And that’s when it hit me. Portia was the woman James had mentioned when we were in Greece.

When I asked him if he had someone in his life—feeling out whether he was actually available—he’d replied that there was someone once, but it hadn’t worked out because she didn’t want the kind of life he had—it wasn’t for her.

It had been obvious from the emotion clouding his eyes that he had loved this “someone” and that she had broken his heart. And in a cabin on a boat on a sound in New Zealand, I realised that Portia was James’s “someone”.

No wonder he’d been so shaken up.