I give him a pained thumbs-up, too mortified to form words as I hurry back to the desk, hiding my face with my passport.

On the plane, there is an empty aisle seat next to me. If life worked like it did in the movies, this would be the perfect opportunity for a meet-cute. I wonder if people ever really meet that way. Maybe I should do a special edition of ‘How Did You Meet?’, and interview couples who all met on planes. As I’m thinking this, a burly man with a sweaty face and crumbs on his chin stops at the end of the row, indicating he is the person I have won in the seat-buddy lottery.

‘Cheer up, love, might never happen,’ he says, my face clearly betraying my profound disappointment with the seating plan. ‘It never hurts to smile.’

I clench my teeth; he has uttered an expression that I loathe with a vengeance, and I have heard it more times than I can count over the last two years. It is an intrinsically sexist comment – if a man were looking contemplative or perplexed, would another man say to him, ‘Cheer up, mate, might never happen?’ Would he be instructed to smile? No, he bloody well would not.

Crumb Face attempts to talk to me throughout the flight. He asks me where I’m staying in Jersey and keeps ‘accidentally’ brushing my leg with his hand. I shift to the far edge of my seat, plug in my earphones to listen to No Jacket Required, my favourite Phil Collins album, and bury my face in my book.

Tiger Woman is full of exactly the kind of meaningless empowerment metaphors I imagined it would be. The first chapter is all about ‘reclaiming your roar’. I quote: Do Tigers worry about the volume of their roar? Do they muzzle their growl and play the pussycat so as not to offend? They do not. The patriarchy forces us to turn down the volume, but we must roar, and roar loudly if we want to be heard. It’s the kind of language that makes me roll my eyes, but then I imagine turning to Crumb Face and roaring at him to stop touching my leg, rather than cowering politely behind my book, and the thought brings a smile to my face.

When we finally land, I dart off the plane as fast as I can, grab my suitcase from the conveyor belt, jump into a taxi from the rank, and ask the driver to take me into town. All I want now is to be alone in my hotel, unpack, wash off the plane, and then order alcohol-based room service.

‘Your first time in Jersey?’ asks the cab driver. He’s wearing a plaid flat cap and has a wild, unkempt brown beard.