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And then I put my phone away and read a bit of my book and reminded myself about the parts of this trip Iwaslooking forward to. Like having some headspace to myself. Walking alone on the beach for the first time in years. French food and chilled rosé wine. Starting a new writing project with a plot that potentially I wouldn’t have to come up with all by myself.

When we landed and made our way into the terminal, I remembered how much I loved the feeling of arriving ina different country and Nice International Airport was no exception. Heat shimmered above the tarmac and it immediately felt heady and warm, even though I hadn’t yet stepped foot outside of a Perspex airport tunnel. I turned on my phone and already had three messages – how could this be when I’d only been in the air for two hours?! One was from Carla wishing me bon voyage, and there was a similar message from Alexa. I’d had a missed call from Dad, plus a text asking if I’d landed yet.

I sighed, putting my phone back into my bag and joining my fellow passengers in the queue for security, keeping half an eye out for Theo so that I could avoid him if necessary. I passed the time by trying to read signs in French and picking out phrases I understood from the announcements piping out over the loudspeaker. The airport smelled like those part-baked baguettes I sometimes treated myself to when I was feeling sorry for myself and needed white carbs with lots of butter.

Once I’d collected my suitcase, which as usual seemed to be one of the last to appear on the conveyor belt, leaving me convinced it had been lost/left in London and that I would have to converse with Theo sporting the same jeans and roll-neck jumper combo I’d been wearing since the early hours of this morning, I headed outside to find a taxi and it was possibly the most glamorous exit from an airport I’d ever experienced. The weather was still and warm and I instantly pushed up the sleeves of my far-too-thick sweater. The Sheraton hotel shimmered in front of us, all glitz and glass, and palm trees sprung up alongside the roads leading out of the airport. I paused for a second, taking it all in, temporarily glad I’d come, before heading for the taxi queue, resigning myself to spending the best part of a hundred euros on a half-hour journey to the hotel (I’d googled it). UntilI stopped dead because there was Theo, leaning languidly against a row of luggage trolleys, staring right at me with his sunglasses on and looking all casual and smug about how attractive he thought he looked. He couldn’t possibly be waiting for me, could he? He probably had a car pre-booked or something.

‘Thought we might as well share a cab,’ he said as I approached. ‘If you want.’

I came to a stop next to him, willing myself to behave like a well-functioning adult and not a teenager who’s just bumped headlong into her captain-of-the-football-team crush.

‘Um, OK,’ I heard myself saying, when every fibre of my being was screamingNo, no, no, don’t do it!This was going to be terrible: the two of us, in the confines of the back seat of a taxi, probably driving at top speed if I knew French cab drivers, and with absolutely no idea how to act with each other or what to say. On the other hand, itwouldsave me fifty euros.

I followed him to the nearest taxi, which had already popped open its boot.

‘Cannes, s’il vous plait,’ I heard Theo say as the driver took my case and I slid into the back seat. ‘Hôtel La Villa de L’Oliveraie.’

‘Oui, bien sûr, Monsieur,’ said the driver.

‘Oh, and is it possible to take the scenic route? No motorway?’ said Theo with an upwards inflection I’d never heard him use before. I supposed we all did that to make ourselves understood when speaking to somebody whose first language wasn’t English, but I’d always thought it was pretty pointless.

The driver grunted, and I was tempted to do the same myself. When Theo got in next to me, I couldn’t help myself.

‘Why the scenic route? Won’t that take longer?’

He shrugged. ‘There’ll be more to see. The coastline is supposed to be spectacular.’

The thought of spending double the time that was strictly necessary in a car with Theo at this precise point in time was less than appealing, especially since he smelled unfairly good, like cloves that had been left out in a wood full of pine trees and baked in the sun, while I probably smelled like the inside of an aeroplane.

‘I’d rather go the quicker way,’ I said.

Theo slammed his door shut and put his seatbelt on. ‘Please yourself. You’d better tell the driver, then.’

I tutted. ‘Fine, I will.Excusez-moi?’ I said to the driver, who was already pulling away from the kerb at about a million kilometres per hour. ‘Can we go the quicker way, actually, please? The motorway?’

It wasn’t like me to risk upsetting our driver, but the fear of spending more time alone with Theo had given me the courage to speak up.

The driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror, his expression unreadable.

‘You want the motorway now? Not the coast road?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said, cringing. ‘Sorry.’

He grunted again, which I took to be a yes. Theo wound down his window, turning his head away from me. It was just like him to take offense, just because I dared to have a different view on which route we should take to the hotel. He generally thought he knew best, which was one of the things that annoyed me – used to annoy me – about him. Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. At first, I’d found it quite sexy that he knew what he wanted and was confident enough to tell everyone about it. It was only later – i.e. after we’d stopped talking – that I turned it into a negative. Now that I hadn’tbeen hoodwinked into finding him phenomenally attractive, I could see him for what he really was – full of himself and far too opinionated for anyone’s (well, my) liking.

Theo shifted in his seat, turning back to face me.

‘Well this is weird.’

‘Yep,’ I said, still smarting from the exchange about which route to take.

‘I wasn’t sure what to make of Carla’s suggestion at first, were you?’

I wound down my own window, then, needing a second to think. Two could play at that game. With its sweeping grey tarmac airport roads and American-style green road signs and the spindly palm trees popping against the darkening blue sky, Nice reminded me a little of LA, where Theo and I had once travelled to together. A bunch of producers had been interested in adaptingLittle Boy Lostinto a screenplay and we’d had a whirlwind few days of meetings and trying to present a united front whilst hiding the fact that we couldn’t stand each other.

‘It took me a while to get my head around it,’ I managed eventually.

‘Not sure my head will ever be around it,’ he said gruffly.