‘Shit, no. In fact, I would probably have to pay them hush money. Or face getting struck off. I don’t mind getting the sack – in fact, I hope I do – but I don’t want to lose my medical licence. The board code of conduct prohibits relationships between doctors and patients, for obvious reasons. And, I hear that prison libraries are chronically short of Hemingway novels like The Middle-aged Man and the Sea,’ he said, his eyes gleaming with playfulness once more.

‘Is that right? Well, you could go on the run, but those police composite sketches can make a man look ten years older, which would be awfully cruel for a bloke your age,’ I teased him.

‘Ha-ha. You’ll pay for that later,’ he said – a fairly innocuous comment that, for some reason, set my nipples on fire again.

As he dashed off to work, I tried to get my head around what had just happened. Maybe I’d started my menopause and the doctor was my hot flush? Maybe he was a fantasist, and all his heroics were invented? Maybe he thought I was getting divorced and was after my settlement payout? He could be one of those guys he’d warned me about, who could suss out a woman’s bank balance with one look. This gave me pause. Because, come on, what red-blooded man could fancy me – a middle-aged, middle-class, boring suburban mum? I mean, not even my shadow wanted to follow me. Clearly the bloke was self-medicating from his doctor’s bag. And, anyway, wasn’t my new motto ‘All men are guilty until proven innocent?’ I made a vow to break off these shenanigans. I would call him after his shift and make it clear.

And yet, catching my reflection in a nearby porthole, I noticed that I was beaming like I’d just had a vitamin B12 shot.

19

The Mexican monarch butterfly migration, the synchronous fireflies of North America, Chile’s flowering desert, the migration of the Christmas Island red crab, the treacherous odyssey of the Serengeti wildebeest – there are many great wonders in this world, but nothing amazed me more than the day I saw my sister Amber eat a carbohydrate. Not just one bite but a whole plate of gnocchi’s worth, followed by tiramisu, a Golden Opulence sundae, and two chocolate-truffle profiteroles. This was unbelievable behaviour from a woman whose dessert habits usually stretched no further than a lick of a sultana with a cup of skimmed air. The woman who’d spent her life lecturing the rest of us on the weighty subject of calorie intake, a monotonous mantra involving orders to take omegas and drink activated charcoal smoothies, was now mainlining cake and cocktails.