I don’t know how long we kiss for.

Let’s just say it’s long enough to make the entire world and everybody in it melt and turn to vapour, and not quite long enough to get us arrested.

Which is good. My urge to see the inside of a Japanese prison is only a very small and transient one.

“OK, I just have one more question,” I say when I finally pull away, flushed and beaming with my lips all tingly and my heart all swoopy and my hair all sticky-outy, like a small dog who’s just been harassed with a hairdryer.

“Of course you do.” I’m pleased to note that Nick looks exactly the same as me, if not a bit beamier and more rumpled.

“How did you find this all out? Poppy didn’t confess all, did she?”

“Obviously not. FYI she’s currently on her way back to England. Yuka is absolutely furious and she’s made sure Poppy’s agent knows it. I think Poppy’s next modelling job will be staring vacantly out from a kitchenware catalogue with her hands on her hips,” Nick says. “Rin, Bunty and Wilbur helped, but most of it came from somebody else.”

“Who?”

Nick points into the distance. “Him.”

I follow his finger and stare at the huge crowd of people walking across the zebra crossing, dodging the bicycles. Then I stare a little bit harder. Because walking through the middle of them – wearing a T-shirt with a guitar drawn on it and a bright purple velvet jacket – is Toby.

Right, I give up.

I clearly know nothing about people at all.

Slowly, I stand up and wait for Toby to reach me. He starts playing Three Blind Mice on his T-shirt. After a few wrong notes he shrugs. “It’s so very important to make an entrance, isn’t it, Harriet? Although in hindsight, I wish I’d worn the drum-kit T-shirt. It’s a bit easier to play under pressure.”

I stare at him, too startled to speak.

“Hey, Nick,” he adds chirpily, waving with his spare hand. “I liked the wellies you were wearing earlier. Do you think they’d go with this outfit, or would it get a bit sweaty around the knee area?”

“Toby,” I finally manage. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m your stalker, Harriet. I’ve been here the whole time. What kind of terrible stalker would I be if I wasn’t?”

“But—”

“I’m getting really good at it, right? I don’t think you knew I was here at all.”

“But how are you here? You’re not even sixteen yet.”

“Oh, I’m here with my parents. They said we could go on holiday anywhere I liked to celebrate the end of my exams, but I just couldn’t decide where to go. That is until some information came to my attention last week.” And he actually winks at me. “They think I’ve been really busy with a school project.”

Toby looks extremely chuffed with himself. “I mean, you’re at my school, right? And this was a fascinating project. I found all sorts of incriminating evidence.” He pulls out photos and crumpled bits of paper and audio recordings and maps and drawings.

All this time I thought I was alone. But really I was surrounded constantly by people who cared about me: Toby, Nick, Wilbur, Bunty, Rin. I just couldn’t see them.

I don’t know whether to be incredibly touched or slightly creeped out.

“Toby – why on earth would you follow somebody 6,000 miles?”

“5,937 miles, to be precise.” He points behind me. “Do you know what that is, Harriet?”

Oh dear. I patiently follow the direction of Toby’s finger. “It’s a statue of a dog.”

“Not just any dog, Harriet. That’s a dog called Hachiko. He was a brown Akita dog and he was adopted in 1924 by a Tokyo professor called Hidesaburo Ueno.”

“Ah.” I nod politely. After everything he’s done, the least I can do is listen to one of his random facts. I make people do this for me all the time.

“Every day for a year Hachiko would come and greet Hidesaburo after work here, at this exact spot at Shibuya station. In 1925 the professor suffered a stroke at work and died, but Hachiko returned to the same spot every single day for nine years waiting for him to come back.”

Tears suddenly spring to my eyes.

“The dog waited for the rest of his life, and when he eventually died the people of Tokyo built a statue in the place he used to wait to commemorate his loyalty, and the fact that he never, ever gave up.”

I bite my lip. That’s one of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever heard.

It’s also exactly why I love dogs. Kylie Minogue would have waited about thirty seconds before going home with the next person who had food in their handbag.

“But it still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“Yes, it does, Harriet. I’m your Hachiko.”

And before I realise what’s about to happen, Toby darts forward and kisses me.