‘Grey,’ he said. ‘Or maybe not? Is that just because we see black-and-white photos? No, probably greyish. Darkish. Amazing. I mean, standing there and looking down at Earth? That would be an incredible thing, wouldn’t it? And the bouncing around. I think it would be brilliant. I’m imagining us living in some kind of lunar module, with enough supplies and water to last us as long as we wanted. Not that I’d need them, I guess. It wouldn’t matter, up there, if we were a few Earth years apart.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, and I wished I could just lean over and kiss him. The feeling swept over me. It was the thing I wanted. The only thing.

‘I wish I could kiss you,’ he said, opening his eyes, reading my mind.

I sighed. ‘Oh God. It’s all I want.’

We looked at one another. I leaned towards him, and he leaned into me. It was the most pointless thing, and the most romantic thing, that had ever happened. I opened my mouth a little. He did too. I shivered as our lips went through each other. We couldn’t touch, but the thrill went up and down my body.

It was the most frustrating, most wonderful, most impossible thing. We stayed like that for ages, and I never wanted it to end.

It was Joe who pulled away. We didn’t speak for a long time. Then I found myself talking, just to break the sudden awkwardness.

‘Do you know where else would be a good place? If we’re going off-planet? Because there’s another one and it’s the one I’d like to move to.’

‘Mars?’

‘Better than Mars. Mars is the god of war. This is peaceful. We should go to the cloud tops of Venus. Mum used to talk about it, and I checked and it’s real. No one could come close to stepping on the surface of Venus because it has runaway warming and all that – though you’d probably be OK, to be fair – but above the clouds it’s perfect for humans. I think we’d have to live in a Zeppelin or something.’

Joe’s ghost fingers stroked my face and I shuddered. ‘I could get on board with that.’

‘My mum would be there.’

‘Cool. I love your mum.’

We mapped out a life above the clouds of Venus. We would live in our Zeppelin, and breathe the air (as this was imaginary it was filled with air that we could both easily breathe; in fact, it filled our lungs and made us sparkle). We would grow our own food.

‘Cloud-strawberries,’ I said. ‘And cloud-ice cream.’

‘Cloud-chocolate,’ he said. ‘Can we have some cloud-burgers? All the things I used to love. Chips from the chip shop, with lots of vinegar. A massive burger with all the trimmings from the fancy burger place.’