‘Don’t be,’ he said as he took a big step backwards, sticking his hands deep into his pockets. ‘I would be more shocked if you didn’t. Anyway, you seemed pretty stressed back at the store so I wanted to make sure things were OK. I hope you and your boyfriend have a wonderful evening.’

With that, he turned and walked away.

I watched him melt into the crowd, his black tux and dark hair mingling with all the other black tuxes and dark hair until I couldn’t work out which one was him, and my heart sank into the soles of my trainers, through the island of Panarea, and down to the bottom of the Aeolian sea.

There were only three things I had ever been absolutely certain of in my life. One, Facebook would bring about the end of civilisation; two, tea should never be made in a microwave; and three, one day I would marry Stewart Bingham. Now I had a fourth certainty to add to that list, that I would never, ever forget the look on Evan’s face when he saw me standing on the terrace.

And what that meant for my certainty about marrying Stew, I did not know.

‘Christ,’ I whispered, grabbing for the bannister beside me, trying to ground myself in reality. There was nothing like re-evaluating everything you’d ever believed on a Saturday night before you’d had so much as a sniff of a drink.

‘Francesca?’

Pulling myself together, I looked up to see Andrew, the curly-haired man in the hat, standing a few feet away and staring right at me. He was surrounded by a gaggle of other men, all of them crowded around one another, giggling and muttering to each other. I slapped on my best please-leave-me-alone smile and nodded. Truly the last person I wanted to talk to.

‘Come here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got something to share with you regarding the whereabouts of Ms Juliette.’

Curiosity really did always get the better of me, even when I didn’t even care that much, but this time, I actually did care. How could he know where she was when I didn’t? The group parted as I walked towards them, all five men huddled around the glowing phone in Andrew’s hand.

‘I thought there were no phones allowed in here?’ I said with what Jess referred to as my ‘big Head Girl energy’.

The whole group guffawed as they pulled out their numerous illicit mobile devices.

‘Send me those, will you, Andy?’ one of the men said, slapping his porky fingers against the screen of his massive phone. ‘Even if they’re deepfakes, they’re good enough for me.’

‘These photos are definitely not fake,’ Andrew crowed. ‘Came to me from a very reliable source. I’m going to flog them to Carden.’