‘Don’t make me drink my airport beer alone!’ I shrieked after him, and he turned on his heel and yelled, imitating a sergeant major:

‘Make it an airport gin and tonic, and I’m sold.’

‘You’re paying,’ I cackled, as he came to retrieve his luggage. ‘So you can have whatever you want.’

He took the tickets from me.

‘May I?’

I stepped back. I vaguely knew which direction we had to head in but I hadn’t figured out which check-in desk yet because I’d been so busy watching everyone and thinking about Boots.

‘I need to buy travel plugs,’ I said. ‘Once we’re through.’

‘I have four,’ he responded, not looking up. ‘We can share.’ Then he creased the tops of his eyebrows together, looking perplexed. ‘Annie, these are business-class seats. Did you know that?’

I took the paper from him and looked. ‘How have you reached that conclusion?’

He pointed at the bit that said: BUSINESS CLASS.

‘That was my first clue,’ he noted.

Business class? I mean. It was nineteen hours to the other side of the world, so if that was right I wasn’t going to be upset by it, but did Alexander’s parents really pay for business class? They weren’t exactly on the bread line, but business class to Australia must have cost thousands of pounds.

‘That feels like a lot,’ I observed, and he watched me chew the information over. ‘Why don’t we go and see what they say at the desk? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but also, I am going to owe Fernanda and Charles an incredibly large Toblerone if it turns out you’re right …’

‘This way then,’ he instructed me. ‘Down to twenty-two to twenty-six D.’ He pointed a finger at the departure board and I quickly tried to locate what he was alluding to. Qantas, the board flashed, check-in desk 22–26 D. It turned out my travel buddy was good at airports too.

‘After you,’ I said, my tummy inexplicably somersaulting as he took my suitcase alongside his own. It was nice that he was a gentleman that way. He was looking after me, and I wasn’t too proud to admit to myself that I liked it. I made a mental note of that detail to report back to Mum on the other side. He looked after me, Mum! He was kind! Stop making me out to be somehow unethical!