Sleep was impossible. I searched around for my AirPods and texted Adzo to see if she was free. This was an emergency. I couldn’t fancy Patrick. Absolutely not. I couldn’t even let myself explore the idea that I fancied Patrick because then I wouldn’t know what to do with that and we still had eight days in Sydney to get through together. That would be a long time if I was trying to keep a secret from him.

I didn’t get a reply from Adzo, which meant I wouldn’t get one for probably the next month. She was like that: either immediate, or fourteen working days to care. I needed to talk this through though. I thought about the only other person I knew in The Single Girls Support Club – Kezza had been the most supportive out of the Core Four, but still sided with the majority that coming away with Patrick wasn’t the smartest move I’d ever made. I needed her though. She picked up on the second ring. It must have been about lunchtime at home.

‘Hey, babe!’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Listen,’ I replied, my voice lowered as much as I possibly could. ‘Can you talk?’

She lowered her voice to match mine. ‘Why are we whispering?’

‘Hold on.’ I grabbed a pair of shorts from my laundry pile and then pulled on a cardigan. Still barefoot I slipped out into the lift of the suite and pressed the button for the lobby. I couldn’t risk being overheard. ‘I need a Single Girls Support Club meeting.’

‘Top secret,’ she said, gravely. ‘I swear. What’s going on? Shoot.’

I sighed melodramatically as I found a corner chair in the lobby to settle into. ‘It’s about Patrick.’

I could hear the line crinkle from the other end and I knew she was smiling.

‘Go on …’

‘Do I have to?’

‘You’ve shagged him?’

‘Kezza! No!’

‘Oh.’

‘But I think I want to.’

She considered the information. ‘I see.’

‘What do I do?’ I was panicked and fraught. I knew the cat was out of the bag and I was desperate to push it back in, despite getting scratched bloody in the process.

‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Do you think he wants to shag you?’

Did I? The way he’d told me I was pretty, how he leaned in to my face, my personal space, with increasing frequency, the way he was always broadly flirty that I’d pooh-poohed as just the way he was with everyone – it was possible. Potentially. He certainly hated when I talked about Alexander, and he’d skirted around the edges of wanting to forgive himself for moving on from Mala. I barely dared hope.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I’m out of practice. And it’s a bad idea, isn’t it?’

‘Depends,’ she replied. ‘How are you doing? In general?’