‘Born ready,’ said Patrick, and I grinned. I’d never been in a limo before.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Make sure you pick up that envelope and give it a read, won’t you? It’s got your itinerary in it. Honeymooners, right?’

‘No, actually,’ I countered.

‘The lady here is treating me because of a big award at work,’ Patrick supplied.

‘Oh really?’ Bianca asked, pulling away from the kerb.

‘I work for MI6 though, so I can’t talk about it I’m afraid. I’ve already said too much.’

Bianca signalled to get onto the highway. ‘I don’t believe you for a second,’ she hooted. ‘If you’re James Bond, I’m the guitarist for The Rolling Stones.’

‘Oooooh,’ said Patrick. ‘Can you get us tickets for the next tour?’

She talked our ear off as we settled in, heading south to Margaret River – I think Patrick’s chitchat had won her over. The road ran parallel to the coast, so as Bianca babbled away through the speaker system to us we watched endless sea meet endless sky out of the window. She told us she was born in Hackney to a Mexican mother and Aussie father who’d died the week before she’d been born, and that Bianca loved rhubarb gin before it was even a ‘thing’.

‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘it’s all about the wine out here. At least for the tourists, anyway.’

She told us, apropos of nothing, how she ‘takes no BS, but I’m sensitive. Just because I have a big gob, people forget that.’ I had an inkling she’d been betrayed by somebody recently, and was trying to reason with herself that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t seem to care that we’d stopped much responding beyond a polite ‘Oh, really?’ or ‘Mmmmmm!’ sound. I was sleepy and relaxed – it was wonderful stepping off a plane and being whisked to our destination. My brain shut down synapse by synapse, letting everyone else’s organization lead the way.

‘Anyway, it was my dad who grew up out here,’ she yapped, and I watched a seagull surf the air, bobbing down smoothly and then shooting back up. ‘And when I turned thirty-three last year I just had this pull to come out and see what he saw when he was a kid. I can’t explain, but this feels more like home than anywhere else in the world to me. Some things just feel right, don’t they?’