‘It’s just over the brow of that hill. There’s a red security light on the gate post. I would invite you in but I’m not allowed visitors.’

‘How come?’

‘My uncle… is a private person.’ I swallowed down an over-eager surge of vomit, desperate not to puke in front of him on our first date.

‘OK, well, if you’re sure you’re gonna be OK?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be fine,’ I said, wafting him away and wheeling my bike in the vague direction of the gates. ‘Honestly, go. I’m good.’

‘Can I see you tomorrow?’

‘You sure you want to?’

‘Yeah. You’re buying me food, remember?’ By this point he was a white blur careening round my vision on a background of stars. ‘I’ll pick you up at noon.’ He wrote the time on the back of my hand and walked back to the car. Didn’t even try to kiss me, the chivalrous prick.

‘Noon. OK. I’ll see you at noon,’ I said, forcing myself to imprint his handwritten note to memory as I edged away from him, vomit rising.

The next thing I remember is waking up in my bathroom with one side of my face on the toilet seat, mascara smudged and a long string of orange drool dangling from my lip. I’d been there all night.

Tuesday, 7 May – Playa Tortuga, Rocas Calientes

Note: no Kill List again. Where there’s no Kill List, there’s no reason to kill. There’s balance in my mind. There is Happy. And with Raf, I was permanently, irritatingly, sickeningly happy. Honestly, if I’d seen us out and about holding hands, kissing necks, stroking hair, I’d have wanted to smash us in the face.

I didn’t tell Tenoch about him – for some reason I wanted to keep him as my secret for the time being. And I don’t know but I thought maybe he might throw a spanner in the works.

I spent the next few days with Raf – each morning after chores I’d ride down to the hotel and we’d hang out with his family, mostly eating, playing drinking games, swimming or wandering the town desperately trying to learn more Spanish so I could join in with all the conversations.

Raf and I talked a lot, and we laughed a lot too. We licked ice cream off each other’s noses, watched sunsets from the shoreline like two bloody idiots. The only reason I’d watched sunsets before was to gauge how dark the sky was before going out to stab a rapist.