‘No, I could do with the air,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve just been thinking, you know, because I’m going home tomorrow.’

‘Me too,’ he replies.

‘You’ve been thinking or you’re going home tomorrow?’ I ask.

‘Both,’ he replies. ‘I just spoke to Marty. He says Ali is going home tonight?’

‘She is,’ I reply. ‘I said goodbye to her not too long ago.’

‘That’s our leverage gone,’ he jokes. ‘He’s booked us both on a flight tomorrow morning.’

‘The party’s over, then,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Seriously, you’ve gone above and beyond.’

‘I’d say you were welcome, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t anything in it for me,’ he replies. ‘So thank you too.’

God, this is so hard. I thought it was going to be hard telling him I had feelings for him but now that I’ve had my reality check, the alternative is even harder.

Telling him how much I like him might’ve been scary but at least it would have been honest. I would have been being true to myself. But this… this is just me being practical, and it sucks.

‘It’s been a fun holiday romance,’ I say. ‘The most fun I’ve ever had. But it’s back to reality now, right?’

‘Back to reality,’ he echoes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You go back to your life, I go back to mine.’

‘And that’s that?’ he asks.

‘Well, yeah.’

I feel like such a cow but I don’t know what else to say. Can I tell him the truth? That I’m so scared he’s going to hurt me, and not because of anything that he’s said or done, but because I know the world he lives in, and I can’t compete. I can’t compete with the women – I certainly can’t compete with the lifestyle. Freddie would be so hurt if I told him that I didn’t want to be with him because I’d just be scared and jealous every second I wasn’t with him. My blood boils at Daniel for getting in my head and planting all these seeds of doubt.

‘Are you going back with Daniel?’ Freddie asks me simply.

If he thought that, would he take this news better?

‘I’m flying back with him,’ I reply. ‘Obviously, we already have tickets.’

‘And when you get home?’

‘Well, we do live together…’

‘You’re actually going to take him back?’ Freddie asks in disbelief. ‘Because he cried?’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ I reply honestly. ‘But I do know that, whatever we’ve got going on, it’s not going to work, is it?’

‘We could make it work,’ he tells me.

‘It’s okay for you, with your easy life. But I’ve got a mortgage and a job that I have to keep doing so I can pay my bills and eat. I have plants that need watering and a grandma who I take shopping every Wednesday. I have an entire life waiting for me, with or without Daniel. And I have to go back to it.’