Minnie walked into the next room and lay down on her bed. The only noise was the ‘plip-plip’ of the dripping tap in the bathroom and the gentle hum of traffic from the adjoining road. She shivered, jumped up from the bed, pulled off Leila’s stupid dress and riffled through her chest of drawers for something warmer to wear. She pulled on tracksuit bottoms, two thermal tops, her thickest jumper and some bed socks, then she climbed back into bed.

She looked at her phone; she should try Greg again. She should call Leila too and cancel their lunch – she couldn’t face going out again today. A wave of exhaustion crashed over her. Now she was lying down, the adrenaline that had been fuelling the last twenty-four hours finally stopped pumping. As well as being shattered, she was also fearful of interacting with anyone else today. Knowing her luck, if she spoke to Greg they would argue. If she went out with Leila, who knows – they were close, but no friendship was impregnable.

She sent Greg, Leila and both her parents a text to say she was fine, not to worry about her, but she had a terrible migraine and needed to take to her bed for the rest of the day. Then she turned off her phone. Minnie didn’t get migraines, she never had, but no one questioned a migraine, no one expected you to soldier through; people just accepted it and left you alone to recover. She didn’t get these migraines often, only a couple of times a year, but they did tend to come on with remarkable regularity around her birthday.

Minnie reached into her bedside drawer for a small brown bottle. It was almost empty, only three little white pills left. They were powerful sleeping tablets she’d been prescribed during a bout of insomnia last year. She had been saving them. She generally slept better now, but it was reassuring to know they were there. Otherwise she would get anxious about the 3 a.m. wake-up, her mind churning and no access to an off switch. She popped one of the remaining pills in her mouth and swallowed it dry. It was only 11 a.m., but if there was ever a day she wanted to sleep through, it was her thirtieth birthday.

New Year’s Eve 2015

Minnie’s hammock was almost perfect. It was exactly the right angle, hung between two palm trees with the head end raised slightly higher than her feet. She could lie back and look out to sea while sipping her coconut through a straw. Her curly brown hair was damp and crunchy from her morning sea swim; her face lightly tanned and freckled from two weeks in the sun – the picture of contentment. And yet, there was something about the rough cotton fabric against her skin that irritated her and stopped her from truly enjoying this last moment in paradise.