‘Sea snakes,’ I panted, scrambling aboard, my tangled hair now resembling a writhing mass of what I was avoiding in the water. I hugged my knees to my chest. ‘I hate snakes. They’re bad enough on land, slithering around, swallowing their prey whole. Some snakes can eat something ten times the size of their own heads, did you know that?’

‘Sounds like certain cruise passengers,’ the doctor interjected.

‘But snakes in the water is just wrong. Plus, they’re so venomous.’

‘But surely most creatures are scared of humans. We hurt them much more than they hurt us,’ the doctor contemptuously paraphrased. ‘So, what now, Jacqueline Cousteau?’

I thought for a moment. ‘The dive boats will be coming back soon from beyond the reef. We’ll just have to wait to be rescued. Jesus. What a misadventure. It’s like being in a bloody Hemingway novel – The Old Man and the Sea.’

‘Oh, ha-ha. Middle-aged, at the most.’ The doctor also dragged his whole body up onto the broken windsurfing board and positioned himself cross-legged, facing me. We sat there in uncomfortable silence – the time racing by as though it were only a year or two.

‘So, how shall we pass the time? I suppose we could sing the harmony line to “Kum Ba Yah” ad nauseam?’ he suggested.

‘Well, as we’re clearly doomed to spend the next god-knows-how-long marooned together, you might as well tell me what . . . I mean, I don’t want to pry . . . Stop me if I’m being rude, but what . . .’

‘Happened to my leg? I wondered when you’d ask. Most people just inquire if I have to take my leg off to have sex.’

‘And what do you say?’

‘“Oh, so that’s what’s meant by a leg-over.”’

I smiled and nodded, hoping to encourage him to elaborate.

‘Croc attack. The croc was called Hagrid. It was living in the lake out the back of our medical camp in Burkina Faso. I thought we had a rapport but turns out he just saw me as lunch.’

I looked at his dark, dancing eyes. It was impossible to tell if he was serious or not.

‘To be honest, I didn’t lose the leg doing anything heroic at all really. No croc wrestling or saving wounded from war zones . . . I was out jogging. Trod on a landmine. Decades on from the civil war in Angola and it’s still one of the most mine-contaminated countries in the world. That’s one day I should not have put my best foot forward.’

I drew a shuddering breath. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s horrific.’

‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit of a prick,’ he admitted after a beat. ‘And you were right. I really was hoping you’d report me. I cannot wait for my cruise contract to end.’

‘Will you go back to Doctors Without Borders?’