‘Care to join?’ he asks, all but sprinting off the boat.

‘What—’ I begin to ask but he interrupts me.

‘I gotta go swim for a bit,’ he says, as he takes a running start and dives into the water.

Vanessa is standing next to the bucket of snorkels and shrugs. ‘Being in the water helps seasickness.’

I scan the boat to see if anyone else is swimming, and see Miguel pointedly looking the other way, clearly trying to stay as far from potential seasickness as possible.

I stand awkwardly by the railing, watching Hugh surface and duck under waves, steadily kicking further from the boat and closer to the reef. The top of the reef is barely visible, a foot or two under the surface about thirty yards from the boat. After a minute, Vanessa nudges me with her shoulder.

‘Do you want to go?’ she asks impatiently. ‘If you go, then I don’t have to. But I don’t want him out there alone – it’s getting a little choppy.’

It’s the least I can do after Hugh recharted our dives. ‘I guess.’ I shrug.

I grab a snorkel from the bucket, spit in the lens, and swish it out with water. Then, I follow Hugh. I try to take a running start like he did, but I chicken out and slip in feet first, nice and slow. The ocean is cool, especially without our stinger suits, and I take a few strokes towards Hugh to warm up. He’s already diving down with his snorkel to check out the reef and surfacing back up like a seal.

‘Are you feeling better?’ I ask, when I reach him and we’re both above water.

He nods happily. ‘Much.’

‘You’re a good swimmer,’ I observe. Even though we’ve been scuba-diving together for days, it’s hard to tell how comfortable people are in the water without a life jacket strapped to their chest keeping them afloat.

‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ Hugh replies. Although his gaze is directed at my body, and we’re treading water so close to each other that I think he’s talking about something else entirely.

I blush. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s more interesting things than me to look at around here.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ Hugh grins, and dives down again.

Access to the reef from a snorkeller’s vantage point is totally different. Some parts of the reef are so close to the surface that there isn’t even room for us to swim over them. We are awestruck at the view, the late-afternoon sunlight streaming over the rocks and the coral.

There’s kelp-like grass reaching for the surface and slimy rocks covered in barnacled algae. Sunlight catches on the slime left from snails that move slowly across the rocks. Curlicues of coral send their fluffy spikes towards the ocean’s surface; they remind me of layers of feather boas.