I remained silent. It was harder than I thought it would be. I wanted to gush, ‘I know, right? How fucking cool is it to be us right now?’ I took a bite of muesli and chewed pensively – if that’s a way you can chew.

‘Sarah?’ The tone in Josh’s voice had changed, and without thinking, I made eye contact. His eyes looked into mine. He was no longer joking or playing. I swallowed my bite of breakfast.

‘Yes?’ It came out nearly as a whisper.

He looked away and his brow creased. What? What did the sexy American boy want to say? And – damn it, damn it, damn it – why did I care so much?

Finally, he spoke.

‘Is it me, or are things weird between us?’

I couldn’t believe it; he had said it out loud. He had given the big thing between us a name – it was ‘weird’. The breath rushed from my body in a big, fat sigh of relief and suddenly I was half-laughing, half-talking.

‘Yes! They are!’

He smiled at me. ‘I am pretty sure it’s my fault. I haven’t been straight with you – mostly because I haven’t been straight with myself.’

I found myself hanging on his every word – every mature, self-aware word.

‘I told you one thing, and then I pursued you – and I behaved as though I had some propriety over you – which I don’t.’ I shook my head in agreement, because he didn’t – or, did he?

‘The thing is, you caught me off-guard. I came on this trip almost on a whim. I booked it at the last minute, and the very most I hoped for was seeing a part of the world I’d never seen before. Stupidly, it never occurred to me that there would be people on this trip – people who would come to mean something to me – people who would affect me.’ And then he said something no one had ever said to me before.

‘You affect me, Sarah. No matter what happens after this trip – if I never see you again – or if I see you every day for the rest of my life, I will never be the same person I was before meeting you, because meeting you has changed me. Forever.

‘And I am super pissed at myself if I have fucked that up. I didn’t mean to, but I am stupid in some ways – relationships being one of them – and I just want to be with you. I don’t even know what that means exactly, but if we could rewind to a couple of days ago and be those people again – and laugh and have a fantastic time and talk about everything – then that’s what I want.’