‘Hmmmm?’ he replied, and I knew I couldn’t get away with saying something about the view. We knew each other, now – knew what each other’s contented sigh sounded like, and how that sigh was different from a confused sigh or an angry sigh. And he looked at me as if he really wanted to know.

‘I just …’ I began. ‘I suppose I’m starting to think about home.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Same.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I think I’ve been a bit airy-fairy with some stuff and being here has made me realize: I could do with cultivating some more responsibility.’

‘Ha! And here I am, having learned the exact opposite.’

He ran his thumb across my knuckles. ‘I’m listening.’

‘I’m going to stop being scared,’ I said. ‘I think … I’ve just spent a really long time waiting to be awarded a qualification for being a person. Does that make sense? I’ve had this sense that everyone else knows what they’re doing more than me, and that somehow I’m this huge screw-up and everyone else knows how to take up space on the planet except me. But … I actually don’t think that’s true.’

Patrick smiled but didn’t say anything.

‘And I don’t think it’s that everyone else is as clueless as me. I think that doesn’t give other people enough credit. You’re so self-assured about your place in the world, after everything you’ve been through, and it’s just really made me think that I could stand to be more self-assured too. I’m tired of seeking some sort of permission to just be.’

‘That sounds outrageously healthy,’ Patrick said. ‘The healthiest.’

‘I’ve not judged myself on this trip,’ I said. ‘Well. Much. I’ve just … been in the moment. And it’s made me understand that I don’t think I’ve ever just been in the moment since, to be honest, I got to be bloody Tallulah on stage when I was fourteen years old. I’ve policed myself and bullied myself ever since then, and going home … I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m not. I’ve been keeping some screwed-up scorecard that marks up all the times I’m a good person and all the times I make a mistake, and if the good tally doesn’t outweigh the bad – which, let me tell ya, it very seldom does – I write myself off as an idiot who is twenty times worse than every single other person on the planet.’

‘Annie,’ Patrick said. ‘I knew you were hard on yourself, but I didn’t know it was that bad.’