ccording to my guidebook, Tokyo is 2,187 km in area. It has 12.6 million people, twenty-three wards, sixty-two municipalities, 168 tube stations and nine train lines. There are 6,029 people for every square km, and it’s the largest metropolitan area in the world. By any stretch of the imagination, it’s a pretty big city.

In the last few seconds it just got a whole lot bigger.

I watch the taxi get smaller and smaller until my grandmother disappears completely. Then I take a deep breath, collect whatever enthusiasm I have left and start dragging my suitcase anxiously up the road.

The wheels keep getting stuck in the pavement, it keeps falling over, and by the time I’ve worked out that the sign for 6B looks like 5E I’ve walked past it six times and most of my excitement has been left in a sticky trail up and down the road, like a big sad snail.

Finally I clear my throat and press one of the buttons lined up in two neat rows, like the buttons on a dinner jacket. It crackles, and a fuzzy voice says, “Yes?”

“Umm. My name is Harriet Manners. I think I’m staying here?”

“I’ll be right down. Wait there.” The crackling abruptly stops, and a few floors above me a door slams.

This is ridiculous. I’ve done exactly as I’m told all my life. Fifteen years of not taking sweets off strangers, running with scissors, playing with matches, jumping off swings, petting stray dogs or accepting lifts from people I don’t know, and this is how it ends: knocking on the door of a stranger in a darkening alley on the other side of the world with nobody to hear me scream.

If I knew I was going to die like this, I could have relaxed and actually enjoyed my childhood.

I start rifling through my satchel for something to defend myself against my imminent attacker. I’m just tentatively wielding the Pocahontas pen I got from Disneyland in front of my face when the door swings open.

“Oh,” the axe murderer says, inhaling sharply, and I drop my weapon.

Because standing in front of me, in black jeans and a grey vest, is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.