Vicki gushed her thanks before excusing herself to go and say hello to her agent. Jack and I drank free bubbly, our bodies getting closer and closer the more we talked. When the only parts left to touch were our lips, Jack whispered, ‘Come with me.’

And I did.

18

I don’t rise early. It’s creeping close to midday when I drag myself to the shower. I throw on a light polka-dot skirt and Rolling Stones t-shirt, keeping my bare essentials in Jack’s khaki man-bag. I don’t need a plan of where to go: Bangkok will take me along with it.

A tuk-tuk pulls up outside the Asia Palace Hotel and without bothering to barter a price, I hop in and simply say, ‘Market.’ I know from experience that anything more specific won’t guarantee I’ll end up where I say. I just need bustle and food.

I recognise the foot spa Jack and I ended up in once at three in the morning.

A pub called the Happy Beer Garden.

The restaurant above a t-shirt store that served the most magical green curry.

‘Riverboat ride?’ the tuk-tuk driver asks me.

‘No. I’ll jump out here, please.’

It’s lunchtime.

‘Table for one?’ the waitress asks.

The place is small, neat, and each table has a map of the world beneath a pane of glass. A group of four Westerners are huddled around one table, an Asian couple on another. I recall Jack and me pointing out all the places we’d been to separately, before we’d met, and he told me about how he got all his belongings stolen from a hostel during his gap year.

I browse the menu, although I know what to order.

‘Green curry with chicken and a pad thai, please,’ I say. ‘And a small beer.’

Eating alone on holiday is not something I’ve ever done before. In the life I’ve always been used to, you go away with the people you love to spend time with. I feel like I’m being watched, silently questioned about why I’m alone, a solo traveller. I mean, I used to sit with my family or Beth or friends from uni – God, this very restaurant not so long ago, with Jack – and wonder why that person didn’t have company. And I could be so fucking judgemental, too. If a British fella in his fifties was having a bowl of noodles and a bevvie on his own, I’d mutter to Jack, ‘Looking for a Thai bride?’ and Jack would agree. Who were we to judge? Maybe that fella had just lost his wife of thirty years and was here in Bangkok to find his equivalent of a man sat in a shopping trolley.