A middle-aged woman in tight white jeans and a floaty top tottered over and gave him a passport and boarding card, barking at length to him in Spanish. He snipped back at her and took the passport, posting it in his jacket pocket. She threw me a curt glance, before rejoining the birthday party, all chit-chattering away over Paris’s sex-tape trauma.

‘My mom,’ he explained. ‘She thinks I’m still 13, not 33.’

‘I have a list too,’ I told him when she’d gone.

‘Really? Who’s on yours?’

‘Be quicker to tell you who isn’t.’

He smiled again and Oh. My. God. His resting bitch face didn’t exactly do him a disservice but when he smiled, the overcrowded smelly Hell around us turned into Ko Samui, complete with cocktails, palm trees and cutely squeaking dolphins. ‘Where are you from?’

‘San Diego. We got relatives in Rocas Calientes. We meet there a couple times a year for special occasions.’

‘What’s this occasion?’

‘My cousin’s twenty-first. What brings you here?’

‘Just visiting,’ I said. ‘My uncle lives in Rocas Calientas too.’

‘Oh cool.’ That was his chance to push the relationship up a gear; suggest we should hang out together, that he could show me around, grab a beer or a light supper, maybe rail me senseless up against some smooth-skinned variety of cactus. But he didn’t – he started watching Paris Hilton again and I lost him.

I entered into a fantasy about that movie Cocktail – that was set in Mexico, wasn’t it? – where Tom Cruise works in a bar and meets that curly-haired chick. And before long they’re going on daytrips to waterfalls and banging by moonlight. That could be us, I thought. Me and Future Husband.

Actually, it wasn’t set in Mexico at all that film, it was Jamaica.

‘There’s a cool art district in Rocas,’ said Future Husband. ‘That aunt I was telling you about owns Galería de Salomé Casta. You should check it out.’

‘Yeah, I will.’ If he’d said she owned the local museum of used tampons and turds I’d have promised to check it out.

‘There’s a cool rooftop bar, overlooking the art walk. And you have to do Campo A Mesa – it’s this organic restaurant surrounded by all the produce and livestock they use in their cooking. It’s up in the hills. I hang out mostly at Sal’s. Or at the hotel where we’re staying, the Holiday Inn. It’s the biggest one on the beachfront, you can’t miss it.’