I realised my mouth was agape and shut it. He looked concerned. ‘You haven’t said anything. Say something. I’m rambling, and I’ll probably keep rambling until you say something. Sarah?’

You know how they say that in the moment before your death, your whole life flashes before your eyes? Well, during that moment, it wasn’t my whole life, but it was the whole trip – the whole trip where I listened patiently to Josh talking about a life of bachelorhood. The whole trip where I’d suppressed the feelings I’d had, because Josh didn’t a want girlfriend. The whole trip – every moment when my stomach had done a little flip because he’d kissed me, or flirted with me, or just looked at me with that glint in his eye. The whole trip where I’d tried to inoculate myself to his charms and his jealousy over James, his possessiveness.

All that flooded through me, then washed away as I gazed into those steel grey eyes. He wanted me. Josh wanted me. ‘Okay.’

‘Really?’ he looked elated.

‘Really!’ I grinned back at him.

‘C’mon, we need to make plans.’ He grabbed my hand and led me back to our spot. He pulled his phone out of his bag, and tapped on the calendar app. ‘I want to see how the next few months look for me.’ He was intensely focused on his phone, while all I had to do was remember when the December school holidays started. Of course, there’d be Christmas with my family, but after that …

‘I could meet you for New Year’s Eve,’ I said.

‘New Year’s?’

I nodded. He beamed. ‘New Year’s in Hawaii. With you. That would be awesome. Let’s do it.’

‘Okay. So, how much time can you get off work? I’ll be on holidays until the end of January, so …’

‘Yeah, probably not that much time. I only get two weeks a year, and I’ve already taken eight workdays for this trip.’

‘Two weeks? Well, that totally sucks!’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot – all those vacation days teachers get.’

‘You cretin – we’ve already had that talk. At least in the US it’s actually a whole summer. I get, like, maybe six weeks off over summer.’

‘Six weeks?’

‘Yeah, yeah, anyway …’ I wanted to steer the conversation away from how easy it was, or wasn’t, to be a teacher. ‘How much time do you think you can get by then?’

‘I can probably take some unpaid leave. Say, ten days all up, including a weekend in the middle?’

‘We can make that work.’

‘Sarah, this is going to be awesome.’

I really hoped so. Who knew if Josh and I travelling together would even work? I suppose it was only ten days – the same length of time as the sailing trip had been. If it didn’t work out, we could always go our separate ways.