I sucked the air in through my teeth. ‘Could you at least wait until I have my knickers back on before you start insulting me?’

Actually that was a good point, I thought, peering around the room. Where were my knickers? I had a horrible feeling they might be on the wrong side of the front door …

‘I didn’t mean literally this, I meant living in London,’ he rapped my arm with a tap just the wrong side of playful. ‘I miss travelling.’

I considered this news with a quiet nod. Patrick could absolutely go travelling. We would FaceTime every day, he could get an Instagram account so I could follow the stories. Maybe I’d even be able to meet up with him for a couple of weeks. Or maybe I’d take a sabbatical and go for a couple of months. Not that I was rushing anything, of course.

‘I’ve always wanted to go to Thailand,’ I said as I rolled onto my stomach, pulling a sheet with me as I went. ‘Have you been?’

‘I’ve been to Thailand so many times,’ he said, taking a swig of whisky straight from the bottle before handing it to me. ‘But you should go, you’d like it. It’s a good starter trip. They’ve got some nice hotels for people who don’t want to rough it.’

‘And I do not,’ I confirmed before I took the tiniest sip. I couldn’t stand the taste of whisky but I knew he wouldn’t have anything else in the house. Patrick was exclusively a whisky drinker. ‘Out of everywhere you’ve been, where is your favourite place in the entire world?’

Patrick sat up and looked at me with an odd look on his face.

‘What?’ I asked as he bounced off the bed and into the kitchen. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Stay there,’ he commanded.

What was he doing? Why had he left the room? I turned over and cursed myself for asking so many questions. It was late, he was tired, I was totally pushing my luck. He’d probably gone to retrieve my pants and call a taxi, not necessarily in that order. From the bed, I could hear cupboards opening and closing, cans clicking and fizzing and the occasional muttering from Patrick.

‘I think this is the quickest way to deal with this,’ he said as he strode back into the bedroom, laptop under his arm and a tray full of food in his hands. Ooh, food. Snacks were my love language and he knew it. He pulled a map down from the wall and laid it on the bed in front of me, placing the tray in my lap and opening up the computer.

‘What’s all this?’ I asked, poking in what looked like a bowl of brightly wrapped sweets. He slapped my fingers away and smiled.