ere are a few new equations for you:

I have wasted six whole months on Nick Hidaka.

In the space of six months, Mercury has gone round the sun twice. In six months, I could have walked all the way across the width of Russia, or cycled over America, or sailed to Brazil. It took Jack Kerouac three weeks to write On the Road, and Charles Dickens six weeks to write A Christmas Carol. I could have written five classic novels in the time I spent thinking about a boy. I could have spent 444 days on Jupiter, and 391 days on Saturn and 1.4 really luxurious days on Venus.

Instead, I filled my head with big black curls and lips that curve up at the corner; with green smell; with shouted laughter; with a boy who disappears whenever he feels like it and says whatever he wants and only ever thinks about himself.

You know what?

I am never liking a boy again, ever. When I get back to school, I’m going to invest all the extra time and brain space into learning Apalachee or Tsetsaut or Susquehannock, or some other language that has been totally dead for more than a hundred years.

And it will still be more productive.

“Done, my little Twinkle-bottom?” Wilbur says, tapping me on the shoulder. I take one last look at the space Nick has disappeared into the way he always does, like the proverbial genie.

Am I done? Is that it? Am I finally ready to let go?

“Yep,” I say, turning to Wilbur and taking a deep breath. “This time I think I am.”

I spend the rest of the journey back to Tokyo quietly staring out of the Shinkansen window at little lights scattered at random through the fields, while Wilbur lightly snores beside me.

By the time we pull back into Tokyo station, all I want is to have a hot shower, pull my penguin pyjamas back on and climb into bed with a crossword puzzle.

But it doesn’t look like that’s an option.

“Poppet-cakes,” Wilbur says in a daze as the train pulls to a stop. He rubs his eyes. “I know I have a super vivid imagination, but is that who I think it is?”

I look out of the window at a small huddle of people in black. Shion, Naho, Haru and a few assistants. And – almost entirely hidden in the middle – Yuka. Like some kind of tiny, fiercely protected, Faerie Queen.

“Perhaps they’re here to give us presents?”

Maybe that’s how modelling works. Maybe when you do a really good job at a shoot they all rush back to greet you at the station with a surprise basket of cupcakes or kittens and maybe a few celebratory personalised banners.

Then I see Wilbur’s face. It’s gone very white and very wobbly, as if all the bones have just been whipped out through his nose.

“My little Bumble-bee,” he says. “Maybe I’m not such a good meerkat after all.”