Lugging my bag around the docks has made me slightly sweaty, and I wipe at my hairline before turning to him. ‘Excuse me?’ I try to ask sweetly, hoping he will forget our bus conversation for long enough to help me out.

He stares at me with his grey-blue eyes. Gentle lines have appeared across his forehead.

‘I’m wondering if you can look something up for me. I’m looking for Coral Sea Dreaming, and I can’t seem to spot their boat anywhere.’

His expression transforms from confused to crestfallen. ‘You’re on . . .’ He pauses and coughs once, like he’s dislodging something from his throat. ‘You’re with Coral Sea Dreaming?’ His accent elongates the name, making it sound like ‘coral sea drayming’.

‘Yeah . . . are you?’

He grunts, which I assume is an affirmative. A pit of dread pools in my stomach. How can the one person who spotted my sunscreen mess-up be on my boat? Aren’t there, like, a thousand boats here?

‘Can’t find that bugger anywhere,’ he says, not meeting my eyes.

‘Have you tried their website? I would but I haven’t got any signal,’ I offer.

‘Yes.’ His tone is curt. I can feel him thinking, Obviously, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

I start to introduce myself, outstretching a hand in his direction, but just as I do, his phone vibrates in his hand and a voice starts sounding out directions. ‘I think it’s this way,’ he says, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders and leaving my hand hanging limply in the air.

‘It’s Millie,’ I mutter, slowly testing out my new identity, but he’s too far ahead to hear me, so my hand returns limply to my side.

We work our way through the docks, ducking under signs and stepping over mounds of seagull poop. Angry suntan man takes a sharp turn to follow a narrower dock. He’s a whole head taller than I am, which makes navigating through the signs nailed to swaying sailboats much faster. Instead of squinting at them, I follow his broad shoulders. Soon we’re all the way at the end of the pier.

We stop in front of a small sailboat, maybe about fifty feet long. ‘CORAL SEA DREAMING’ is written in large blue lettering across the side. Benches line the back of the boat in a large square around what must be the captain’s chair. A man and a woman are sitting on one of the benches, their hands intertwined. Her head is resting on his shoulder and he’s showing her something on his phone. In unison, they both start to laugh.