The following night, in fact.

We’d spent the perfect Saturday together at Campo A Mesa, a sunny, field-to-table restaurant up in the hills, eating lunch and petting ponies, lying in long grass, drinking bottomless mimosas and falling asleep in each other’s arms. And that evening we came back to the beachfront and ate fresh crab on the griddle, cooked by one of the fishermen, and Rafael and he got into an easy conversation which he translated so I could join in. It was a magical one-of-a-kind sort of day.

‘You have cilantro in your teeth,’ he said as we walked back to the hotel.

‘Do I?’ I said. ‘I don’t have a mirror.’

‘I’ll be your mirror,’ he said, turning to me face on.

‘You’ll need to get it out for me then, won’t you?’ I said as he leaned into me, holding my hands and kissed me slowly, deeply, edging his tongue inside my mouth and licking across my top teeth. I pulled away. ‘Did you get it?’

‘Nah, I’ll have to try again.’ And he did it again, this time all along the bottom set instead.

‘Got it now?’

‘Yeah, I got it,’ he said. I kissed him again. I didn’t ever want to stop. ‘Are you good at getting cilantro out of other places?’ I asked. ‘Cos I got some in some other places too.’

He got all embarrassed and dipped his head and I nudged him, giving his ass a little kick as he strode out in front of me.

‘It’s been a nice day, hasn’t it?’

‘The best,’ he said, putting his arm around me.

‘Don’t let’s stop having days like this.’

‘OK, if you insist.’

But, of course, there came the banana skin. They don’t just stop dropping from the sky because you’re in love. At least, not for me.

We were walking across the car park at the back of the hotel and two guys were sitting on a low wall, drinking.

‘Hey girl, you got some good titties there,’ the blond American shouted, followed by the laugh of his tall, red-haired friend.

‘Keep walking,’ said Raf, squeezing my hand a little tighter.

‘I’m not afraid of them,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid for them.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Rafael tried to laugh but he was winding tight.

The comments carried on, all across the parking lot. ‘Hey girl, come back and show us those big titties. Come on. You can do better than him!’

God knows why he’d said that. Rafael was a walking-talking Aztec god and he was skinny-assed dick crust in ill-fitting jeans.

‘Come on over here and suck on this big ol’ dick, babe!’

His mate was even worse – a ginger belch on legs wearing Letterman sweats and puffing out his chest to appear more hench than he actually was. I’d seen more hench on Judi Dench.