I had been to Mykonos a couple of times when I was touring. I knew it as a party island, the gay capital of Europe, populated by handsome, tanned men with hairless bodies and a penchant for girlie cocktails and dance music. It had some incredibly beautiful beaches, and the beach clubs were the stuff of legends – teeming with Adonis bodies and heady with the sound of electronic music. In the late noughties, it was touristy and exciting, and it was my first taste of the Greek Islands.

There was also a traditional side of the island I had loved when I’d been there last. It was the sort of place where you could sit at a waterfront café and watch fishermen haul their catches to the shore, or see an elderly couple transporting fresh produce home from the market on the back of their donkey. Yes, really.

Like Santorini, it was dappled with whitewashed buildings and those gorgeous windmills – fat white cylinders capped with thatched roofs and ragged cloth sails, which seemed more for show than for function. The main port town of Mykonos was crisscrossed with a labyrinth of walkways and paths – by design, I was once told by a local. Nearly two millennia ago, Mykonos was frequently targeted by pirates, so the town was built like a maze to confuse them. It gave the locals an advantage so they could attack the pirates from hiding places.

I wasn’t a pirate, but I had certainly found it easy to get lost in the town of Mykonos. It reminded me of Venice. If you found somewhere that you liked – a store, a café, a bar – you’d best make careful note of where it was, otherwise it was practically impossible to find again. There was a jewellery store there I’d found once – once, and never again. That was when I’d learned not to say, ‘I’ll buy it next time I’m here.’ I still wish I’d bought that silver bracelet.

The boat leered at a forty-five-degree angle and we all braced against something, anchored in so we remained upright. I was supposedly reading a novel on my Kindle. Even though it was the latest in a crime thriller series I’d been reading for years, it wasn’t really holding my attention. Josh’s forearms were, though.

He was wearing a pair of shorts and a light blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had tanned over the course of the trip, and the whole effect of the tanned forearms and the shirt – and pretty much the rest of Josh – was drawing my attention far more than a well-reviewed thriller.

His eyes were hidden behind the lenses of his sunglasses, but I saw him turn in my direction a few times. He was also reading – or perhaps pretending to, like I was.