Page 65 of So, I Met This Guy . . .

Babe! The ticks aren’t going blue. WHAT’S GOING ON??!!!

Maggie wasn’t sure how to reply.

Meanwhile Flick was reading aloud the activities from the cruise ship, along with its itinerary. It was all a bit of a long shot. They’d missed him in Rome, despite hitting all the major tourist spots and Flick showing everyone a photo of him on her phone, as if they were looking for a missing person, which technically she supposed they were. The chances of finding him here were slim. Even with Flick’s forensic approach to his social media.

‘OK, so he hasn’t posted any photos, but someone’s tagged him in their stories.’

‘Great!’

Maggie had no idea if this was great or not. In fact, to be honest, she found it all a bit bewildering. OK, so she’d stalked a few ex-boyfriends on Facebook, who hadn’t? But this was on a whole other level and involved hours spent scrutinizing stories and reels, cross-referencing posts, following the breadcrumbs of hashtags to various other accounts and apps until you ended up in a world of TikTok videos with strangers challenging you to do all kinds of weird and crazy things with loud music that drove you bananas.

(Confession: she still didn’t know exactly what a reel was and had never done a TikTok challenge, but was too embarrassed to admit this to Flick for fear of looking like an old person.)

Watching Flick now poring over her phone, fingers flying as she scrolled through different screens, Maggie was reminded of an article she’d once read about MI5 wanting to recruit more women to be intelligence officers as they were more intuitive. Forget journalism, Flick should have been a spy.

‘The photo’s taken from the deck of the ship. It’s a group shot.’ Flick pinched the screen with her fingers. ‘Problem is, I can’t see him in the photo, so that doesn’t make sense.’

‘Maybe he took it?’ suggested Maggie, randomly.

‘Oh, well done!’ Flick looked at her, like she’d just cracked a code. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘And the view in the background definitely looks like the Amalfi Coast,’ Maggie continued, peering over Flick’s shoulder. ‘I recognize that lighthouse, we drove past it.’ She felt quite pleased with herself. So what if she’d never done a TikTok challenge? She wasn’t completely useless.

‘I don’t remember seeing any lighthouse.’

‘That’s because you were too busy throwing up in a sick bag.’

‘Oh God, don’t remind me.’ Flick grimaced. She felt nauseous just thinking about it. ‘Only problem is it was posted four hours ago.’

‘By who?’

‘Technically, it’s by whom.’

‘Are you going to give me a grammar lesson or are we going to try to find him?’

‘It’s an old couple. Judging by the wedding photos they posted last week I’d say they were on honeymoon.’ Flick’s face crumpled into a smile. ‘Aw, sweet. Later-life love.’

Maggie looked at the photos. They looked like they were in their early fifties. Is this what later-life love looked like? Fifty used to seem so far away and now it was just around the corner. Literally, days away. How did that happen?

Flick’s voice pulled her back from the edge of that particular rabbit-hole. ‘At least he can’t be trying to romance scam a couple of honeymooners.’

‘But where is he?’

‘I don’t know. The rest of their stories are a lot of kissing selfies.’ Flick pulled a face at the horror of old people fancying each other and quickly swiped past their page. ‘But we’re on the right track, we’re going to bump into him at some point.’

‘Are we, though?’

‘It’s bound to happen if we keep going to the same places. It’s the law of averages. I mean, I’m forever bumping into my weird neighbour at my local supermarket. In fact, it can be a bit annoying.’

‘The Amalfi Coast is a bit different to your local Tesco.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Maggie still wasn’t convinced, but she’d committed to the road trip. For reasons that were less about confronting her past and more about wanting to avoid her future. What did she have to go back to? A missing cat, torrential rain and an eviction? Her home was a mouldy caravan and, judging by the number of voicemails from the council, which she was putting off listening to, she wasn’t even going to have that for much longer.

Unless by some miracle she managed to turn things around and get back her life savings, she was going to be homeless. And then what?

Maggie couldn’t even face thinking about it and being here meant she didn’t have to. Being here felt like running away. She turned to look out of the open window, to gaze at the glittering Mediterranean on the horizon, to breathe in the warm lemon-scented breeze and lie on clean sheets in dappled sunlight. To feel a million miles away from a wet muddy field and the mess of her life.