tudies have shown it takes exactly four seconds for a silence to become awkward.

I think somebody needs to tell Nick this.

He’s still standing in the car park with his hands slung nonchalantly in his pockets. There isn’t a flutter of discomfort or embarrassment on his handsome face.

Five seconds: nothing. Six seconds: nope. Seven seconds: nada. Eight sec—

“Come with me,” he says abruptly, looking up. I’m forced to quickly pretend I’ve been studying an imaginary pigeon in a tree just behind his head.

“Pardon me?”

He awkwardly scratches his head. “Please? Unless you want to spend the next ten minutes standing in a car park?”

Pretend, Harriet. Pretend as hard as you can.

“Actually,” I say in a desperate attempt to sound like I’m not bothered either way, “white vans are quite interesting. Did you know that you would need 772 of them to move one billion Cheesy Wotsits?”

Yeah. That’ll work.

He’ll either think I’m totally over him or inordinately obsessed with private transport. And cheese-flavoured snacks.

“Of course,” Nick says, nodding seriously. “Everybody knows that. Let’s go.”

He turns and starts striding towards the other side of the trees. I start objecting that Wilbur won’t be able to find us again, that we’ll get into trouble, that we’ll get lost, and then I realise that with every hesitation he’s getting further away. So I set my shoulders into their most cool, unbothered position and saunter casually after him. Then – because he’s so fast – I saunter a little more quickly.

Then I break into a cool, unbothered kind of jog.

I’m just about running – cool and unbothered, and breathing quite heavily through my mouth – when the trees suddenly clear.

In front of us is an enormous, sparkling lake. A few flossy white clouds are hovering in the sky, which is now starting to deepen to a faint lilac colour with a slightly pink horizon. The lake is surrounded by a grey pebble beach and tiny flowers, and directly behind it is Mount Fuji.

We are totally alone.

I suddenly feel uncomfortable. As if I’m doing something very, very wrong.

I turn around and start walking quickly back towards the car park. “Harriet?” Nick says, and I pause then turn to face him. “Are you OK?”

I half nod without saying anything.

“Here.” Nick reaches into his pocket. He walks forward and hands something to me.

“What’s this?” I look at the money he’s just forced into my hand. “What are you paying me for?”

“Hold it up.”

There’s a picture of a man on it with big bouffant hair and a bushy moustache. “Hideyo Noguchi, the famous Japanese bacteriologist?”

Nick frowns then shouts with laughter. “Not that side. Turn it over.”

On the other side of the note is a little circle: a blue picture of a mountain topped with snow, reflected in the lake below it. I must have used 1,000-yen notes at some stage in the past week but I’ve never noticed it. I look back at the view in front of us. “Is this—”

“Where we are now? Yes. This is the exact spot where that picture was drawn. I wanted you to see it.”

There’s a silence while I try to process this.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Nick says. “I suppose I wanted to give you something this time.”

We both look at the floor while I fiddle with the corner of the note. Then I say quietly, “Poppy’s very beautiful, isn’t she?”

I sort of feel as if I need to put her name out there, like a line in the sand.

Even though it’s not actually sand: it’s pebbles.

But you know what I mean.

Nick glances at me sharply, and a deep line appears between his eyebrows. He pauses, then says, “Yes, she is. But I prefer you.”

The awkwardness in my stomach is getting tighter and tighter, and the urge to run away is unbearable.

What the sugar cookies is Nick doing?

I suddenly don’t want him to say anything else. I feel as if I’m about to lose the boy I knew for good. And not to someone else this time: to a different version of himself. One who is a cheat.

Which is so, so much worse.

“I think we should stop talking to each other now,” I say in a brittle voice. “Frankly, I think you’re being awful.”

Nick flinches. “Harriet—”

“There you are, Chuckle-monkeys!” a voice cries behind us, and a hand in a twinkly pink suit lands on my arm. Wilbur beams over my shoulder. “The light’s running out, Pizza-bottom. We need you to get ready now.”

I glance briefly at Nick, but he’s staring at the lake: profile outlined against the sky, face totally unreadable.

Whatever he was going to say has gone.

It feels like it’s not the only thing.

Swallowing hard, I follow Wilbur quietly back across the car park. But not before I’ve folded the note in half.

And dropped it on the floor behind me.