‘I was very pleasantly surprised,’ Nico adds, ‘that you took the post, to be honest. I never thought we’d get a big name like you on board.’

‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘Who wouldn’t want to spend some time in the Caribbean? Makes a change from rainy old London.’ It wasn’t quite as simple as that, but I don’t want to shout about my reasons for wanting to get away, so I quickly move the conversation on.

Nico seems genuinely interested as I witter on about my favourite dishes, interspersed with some name-dropping of a few of the more famous clients I’ve served. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most people are much more interested in hearing about who has eaten my food than about the food itself. However much I am known for my attention to detail when it comes to my dishes, a story about a celebrity ordering a £20,000 bottle of wine or being caught snorting coke in the loos always trumps me droning on about the provenance of my ingredients or the best way to grate truffles.

Once we have cleared our plates, they are again whisked away and replaced with wood pigeon breasts artfully arranged on crisped bok choy.

‘And I understand you’re staying on during the lay-up?’ Nico adds.

‘Looking forward to it,’ I say. And I really am. I made it a condition of my employment. The lay-up is only two months, but all I’ll have to do is cook for a skeleton crew, though I also want to use the time to develop the menus and strategies, and hope this might help me in my quest for a third star for the restaurant. I’ll be overseeing meals for about a hundred people instead of several thousand as the ship is renovated, and on the same money too, so it’s a pretty good deal for me. And after all that stuff that happened in London, I’m ready for some stress-free downtime.

‘Everything is organized for the lay-up, Leo, is it?’ Nico asks. ‘You’ve got the required staff to keep it ticking over?’

‘Yep – all sorted,’ he confirms. ‘Way more people wanting to stay on than we could take in the end. You think they’d be ready for a holiday away from the ship by now, but I guess they need the money. Or have nowhere else to go.’ There is an awkward pause. ‘I’m staying on too, as you know,’ Captain Leo adds.

‘And I appreciate that,’ Nico says. ‘I know Immanis will be in good hands.’

Dessert is brought out – a fruit salad, chopped into equally sized colourful cubes and delicately sculpted into a tower in a spun-sugar cage, sprinkled with edible glitter. As the two men ooh and ahh over the dessert and how pretty it is, the sparkly dressed hostess appears at the side of our table, her customary smile unusually absent.