‘We’ll see them again, silly. They love us! Come with me.’ I pointed towards the marina as I started walking. Josh fell into step beside me.

‘Or maybe,’ he exclaimed, as though he had worked it all out, ‘they’ve kicked us off the trip, and this is how they decided to tell us.’

‘You’re right. It’s most likely that,’ I replied, deadpan.

We turned onto the pier and were not far along when we saw a man who looked a lot like Gary running towards us, waving madly. When he got closer, it turned out it was Gary. Brilliant. We’d found our people.

‘Hey, you guys,’ he said, coming to a stop in front to us. I noticed he wasn’t even puffing from the running.

‘Hey, yourself,’ I said. I was intrigued about what the explanation could be. I imagined Josh was too, especially as we’d been so close to running away together.

‘I’m glad I found you,’ he said.

‘Well, we kind of found you,’ Josh replied. Yep, I could hear it in his voice – he was waiting for a reasonable explanation.

Gary must have sensed that he needed to get straight to the explaining part, because he did. ‘We’re so sorry if we worried you guys. The harbour master came by and said a berth had opened up at the marina, but if we wanted it, we had to move our boat right then. No waiting for passengers who were elsewhere. Just move the boat or lose the berth.’

‘And we needed that berth, right?’ asked Josh. ‘For water and electricity.’

‘Right – exactly. If we hadn’t moved, we would have been low on water for the sail to Tinos tomorrow morning. Duncan didn’t want to risk it, so I helped him get into the berth, and then he sent me to look for you guys.’

‘It was a bit of a shock to come back to a missing boat,’ I said. Poor Gary looked like he was going to apologise again. I stopped him with a shake of my head. ‘No, look, it’s totally cool. We understand. Thanks for coming and looking for us.’

‘Yeah, no problem. I’ve got to go find Marie and Gerry now.’

‘Oh! We weren’t the only ones?’ I said.

‘No. Only Hannah and I were on board with Duncan. That’s why he needed my help. Anyway, I should get back to where the boat was before Marie and Gerry get there.’

‘Yes, of course – sorry. Go!’ I said. We sent Gary off with another round of thank yous to his back. He waved over his shoulder as he ran down the pier, but didn’t turn around.

‘He’s a good guy,’ I said as we continued down the pier.