I don’t know how long I stand there for.

It could be minutes; it could be hours. It could be a thousand years and vines have started to grow up the back of my shins and moss has started to sprout out of my shoulders and squirrels and birds have set up home in my hair and I don’t notice.

I have been so incredibly, unbelievably stupid.

Nick didn’t want to talk to me so we could get back together. He wanted to tell me he had met somebody else. He wasn’t trying to woo me.

He was trying to warn me.

Snippets from my happy little email are starting to bounce around inside my head, and every time a line makes contact I sink further towards the centre of the earth.

I’ve been thinking about you lots! Five hundred miles.

Of course I have! Another five hundred.

Send me another message or ring me? Three hundred miles down.

I’VE MISSED YOU SO MUCH. Another thousand.

Four kisses, and a needy, keen smiley face: :) And I’m right in the middle where there’s nothing but flames and molten lava and hotness forever and ever and ever.

Oh my God. This doesn’t happen in any of the stories I love. Except maybe in the Hans Christian Andersen version of The Little Mermaid, and that doesn’t bode well for my immediate future.

No wonder I can’t find my voice any more. I probably sold it to a Sea Witch in return for legs.

“Harry-chan?” A soft hand lands on my shoulder. “You OK, Harry-chan? You are very paling, Harry-chan. Perhaps you are lagging jet now?”

I turn and look blankly at Rin’s pretty face.

“I-I-I …” I swallow. “I – umm – think I’m suddenly quite tired.” I turn around and start wobbling on jelly legs into the bedroom. “It’s been a really long day.”

I push Kylie-cat aside, crawl into my new bed fully dressed and wrap my arms around my legs. Today is starting to feel like one of those confusing nightmares where you wake up crying and sweating and hurting and you don’t quite remember why.

“Yes, you sleep,” Rin says, sitting on the edge of my bed and carefully tucking me in. The cat jumps up and starts kneading my legs, but Rin picks her up. “No, Kylie Minogue. Bad cutey. No making biscuits on Harry-chan while she sleeping.”

Then she follows my blank, shattered gaze to the door. “Nick is super handsome, ne? He is like prince or movie star or man in Abercrombie advert. One day I am hoping I will be in romantic twosome with Australian. Is it not perfect, Harry-chan? Like fairy tale?”

I can suddenly see Nick and Poppy: all cheekbones and glowing skin and perfect, magazine-approved beauty. Matching perfectly. Fitting perfectly.

“Yes,” I agree. “Exactly like a fairy tale.”

Just not mine.

And then I close my eyes and wish – with every part of my eternal mermaid soul – that I was at home, in England.