I follow her into the kitchen, where a rich and meaty smell hangs in the air, and realize I am hungry. My skin is slick with sweat. The windows are open, the back door too, but the draft coming through the flyscreen is as warm as the air in the room, and the ceiling fan only circulates the heat.

Mikki fans her face as she stirs the pan on the stove. Now that she’s got over her shock, she seems happy to see me, but you never can tell with Mikki. She comes from a culture of politeness before all else. I, on the other hand, have one of those faces that shows every emotion so I keep my gaze firmly on the surroundings.

Dishes are piled high in the sink; ants crawl over the worksurface. Strange. Mikki’s a neat-freak—used to be, anyway—and the place I shared with her in Cornwall was always spotless. She sees me looking and squashes ants with her finger.

My head throbs with a mixture of dehydration, tiredness, and jetlag. “Can I have some water?”

She fills a glass from the water dispenser on the fridge. I slosh ice water over my fingers and T-shirt in my hurry to get it to my mouth, but it feels so good I’m tempted to pour the whole lot over me.

Mikki mops her brow. She looks leaner and stronger than I’ve ever seen her, even when she was competing. Below her denim cut-offs, her feet are bare, nails glossy with black polish.

“You look amazing,” I say.

“Thanks. So do you.”

“Don’t lie. Especially after that flight. No wonder you don’t want to come back to the UK. Who’d want to experience that flight again?” I’m trying my hardest to shift the tension, but it’s still there.

“Your hair.” She reaches out to touch it. “It’s so—”

“Boring?” Since we met in the last year of primary school, my hair has been every color of the rainbow except its natural mousy brown.

She laughs. “I was going to say normal.”

I laugh too, even though “normal” is probably not a compliment in her book—or mine.

Mikki spoons casserole onto plates. As she sets them on the breakfast bar, I spot the tattoo on the inside of her wrist. “What is that?” I say.

She glances at it like it’s no big deal.

We talked about tattoos before I got mine—a bird in flight that she designed for me, on my shoulder blade—and I told her she should get one.

“No way,” she’d told me. “My parents would kill me. A lot of Japanese people think tattoos are dirty. You can’t go in a gym or public swimming pool if you have them.”

“Still?”

“Yeah. Or you have to cover them. Many companies won’t employ you if you have tattoos. It’s not good for their image.”