‘Oh, wow,’ she says as she claps eyes on the villa. ‘This place is the shit.’

‘It is,’ I reply with a laugh. I can’t believe how delighted I am to have her here. I feel like a scared little kid whose cool older sister has just shown up to show me how to do my eyeliner and to scare away the bullies. ‘I should probably tell you, Daniel and Eva are staying in the suite next door.’

‘Of course, they are,’ she replies. ‘I dare them to come out while I’m here. So, show me where I’m sleeping.’

I absolutely love that she’s just turned up to stay with me. It speaks volumes about our relationship, that she feels as if she can – and that I’m delighted to have her here.

‘There’s a king bed upstairs and a really big, really comfortable sofa down here,’ I reply.

‘I’ll take the sofa,’ she says, eyeing it up. ‘Just in case I pull, I don’t have to wake you up.’

‘Ahh, just like old times, when we swapped bedrooms in our flat so yours was nearer the front door and the bathroom.’

I say this with a real nostalgic tone, but at the time, it was a nightmare. I liked a wild night out as much as the best of them, but not like Ali. Ali is always on it, 24/7. I liked an early night every now and then, and her entrances with her friends or her gentleman friends were very noisy and always in the a.m. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when she only just made it through the front door before pouncing on her date in the hallway, right outside my bedroom door. The other bedroom was on the other side of the kitchen, so we swapped. At the very least, it lessened the sound effects.

‘So, we need to go shopping,’ she says. ‘We need crisps, and lemon pop, and some alcohol and, oh, some Nutella. And we can just chill by the pool and chat, and I fucking dare Daniel and Eva to come outside.’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ I reply. ‘There are plenty of shops so, if you want to put some pants on, we could take a stroll down?’

‘Back down the hill?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only to come back up?’ she whines.

‘That’s how hills work.’

‘Okay, fine, but I’m fine like this, right? We’re on holiday – I don’t need pants.’

‘You don’t always think you need pants in London,’ I tease.

There’s a knock at the door.

‘If that’s the stare-y guy from before, tell him I’m not interested,’ she says.

‘Aren’t you? He was handsome.’

‘I’m low-key interested in a way that he doesn’t need to know about yet,’ she replies.

‘Got it.’

I open the door, ready to give one of my speeches to one of Ali’s rejected lovers – sometimes I’ll take the kind route of ‘it’s not you, it’s her’, other times I’ll get a little creative, saying that Ali has moved abroad to work for charity or they’re sending her into space to see if she can communicate with aliens. If I’m feeling especially uncreative, but want something effective, I’ll tell people she’s at the gynaecologist’s.