‘Well, I am crazy – crazy in love with you. Flabba and Boris can forward your stuff.’

‘You must have a brain malfunction if you think I’d want anything to do with a woman who lies about having cancer. I’m a doctor, for fuck’s sake. And if you can lie about that, what else can you lie about?’ he added, keeping me fixed in his unflinching gaze.

‘I’m not lying when I say I’ve fallen for you. I’m your Saint Bernard, remember? With the whisky barrel?’

‘Yeah, and then you bloody well bit me. I told you what a big thing it was for me to trust you. And now I find out you’re a liar.’ His rebuke reverberated across the deck. ‘The chances of my trusting you now are about as probable as Tonya Harding making a return to professional figure skating.’

The magnate was finally aboard, all flushed and flustered, and the harbour pilot was making ready to leave the ship. It was now or never.

‘Please forgive me.’ I seized Brody’s arm. ‘It was all a mistake that started with the misdiagnosis.’

Brody’s face hardened – he was closing in on himself, like the sea swallowing a skimmed stone. ‘Why should I believe that? You’re clearly a fantasist. I mean, who are you? For all I know, you do this to all the men you pick up. Just leave me alone.’

‘But . . . I love you,’ I said, falteringly, feeling the bump as our relationship hit an iceberg and began to go the way of the Titanic.

Brody gave me a look that made it clear his love for me had joined a witness protection program and that I was on the list of Australia’s least wanted. ‘I never want to see you again. Men, escort this stowaway off the ship,’ he ordered the crewmen.

The two seamen frogmarched me back to the ladder and stood watch while I descended to the waiting water taxi.

After landing aboard with a thump, I looked back up at the ship’s deck, but Brody was gone.

As the little speedboat peeled away from the mothership, I achieved a personal best for self-loathing. No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me; I didn’t want anything to do with me either, I thought, bleakly.

‘Anythin’ I can get ya, kid?’ the skipper asked, a bit alarmed at my ashen visage.

‘Um . . . a sprinkling of Valium and a heroin chaser?’ I replied, weakly.

‘Right. I was thinking more along the lines of a sick bag or a bottle of water.’

‘Does it come with any strychnine?’