Angelina smiled sympathetically. ‘And you are Mr … Cook? Or Mr …’

‘Blythe. Mr Blythe,’ said the guy. ‘Eddie couldn’t make it. He’s the Cook. Well, no, he’s not a cook, he’s gonna be a vet, I just mean he’s the Cook, on your list. Mr Cook.’

Angelina looked thoroughly confused. She ticked off his name from her list and invited him to find a seat. He headed up to the back of the bus. Catrin, who had been momentarily distracted by the kerfuffle, returned to reading in her guidebook about the abandoned village of Samaria, which it said they would reach halfway into their hike.

Suddenly a voice.

‘Can I sit here?’ It was the latecomer.

‘Er … yeah!’ She moved her sunglasses and cardigan to make room for him, inwardly disappointed that she no longer had two seats to herself on which to stretch out.

He put his small rucksack in the rack above them, along with the sweatshirt he’d had tied around his waist, and sat down hard into the seat.

He took several glugs from his water bottle and sighed with relief. ‘That’s better,’ he said to no one in particular.

Hidden behind her guidebook, Catrin watched curiously as a drop of sweat scurried from the guy’s forehead, trickled down his nose and loitered uncertainly on the top of his lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, then turned to her.

‘I’m Solomon,’ he said.

And Catrin was completely floored by his unexpectedly beautiful smile.

They’d ended up chatting for the whole journey whilst Judith and Lana both slept in the seats in front of them. She was fascinated by his faint Geordie twang and the way he lit up when talking about stuff that excited him. They had a huge amount in common. A startling amount, in fact.

He, too, was on his travels before going to university – spending a gap year seeing the world with his mate Eddie. ‘The no-show Mr Cook?’ Catrin smiled.

‘That’s the one,’ said Solomon, smiling back. ‘And he was meant to be coming today, but the stupid dork got so drunk last night he couldn’t even move this morning. He went to this bar called Lexi’s?’

Catrin laughed, thinking how Lana could so easily have been Eddie, had she not put her foot down the night before. ‘Yeah, I know it,’ she said.

‘I should probably have stayed with him this morning just to make sure he was OK – he could be dead now, for all I know! But the thing is, I’ve been looking forward to the Samaria Gorge for almost the whole trip.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘And Eddie knows that! Like, I first read about it when I was, like, ten.’

‘National Geographic?’ she asked, catching him off-guard.

‘Yeah! How d’you know?’

‘Me too!’ she replied.

There were a lot of ‘me too’ moments in the conversation, both from Catrin and from Solomon. Two lifetime summaries crammed into a forty-five-minute bus journey. They both had an older brother called Tom, a love of Elvis Presley and an allergy to cats. ‘And yes, the irony’s not lost on me,’ said Catrin.