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Number One: separate bedrooms. Whatever happened, there were to be no shared beds, neither double nor single, no drunken cuddles or hugs; they were not students anymore. ‘And I don’t see the point of cuddling anyway,’ Dexter had said. ‘Cuddling just gives you cramp,’ and Emma had agreed and added:

‘No flirting either. Rule Two.’

‘Well I don’t flirt, so. .’ said Dexter, rubbing his foot against the inside of her shin.

‘Seriously though, no having a few drinks and getting frisky.’

‘“Frisky”?’

‘You know what I mean. No funny business.’

‘What, with you?’

‘With me or anyone. In fact that’s Rule Three. I don’t want to have to sit there like a lemon while you’re rubbing oil into Lotte from Stuttgart.’

‘Em, that is not going to happen.’

‘No, it isn’t. Because it’s a Rule.’

Rule Number Four, at Emma’s insistence, was the no nudity clause. No skinny-dipping: physical modesty and discretion at all times. She did not want to see Dexter in his underpants or in the shower or, God forbid, going to the toilet. In retaliation, Dexter proposed Rule Number Five. No Scrabble. More and more of his friends were playing it now, in a knowing ironic way, triple-word-score-craving freaks, but it seemed to him like a game designed expressly to make him feel stupid and bored. No Scrabble and no Boggle either; he wasn’t dead yet.

Now on Day Two, with The Rules still in place, they lay on the deck of the ancient rust-spotted ferry as it chugged slowly from Rhodes towards the smaller Dodecanese islands. Their first night had been spent in the Old Town, drinking sugary cocktails from hollowed-out pineapples, unable to stop grinning at each other with the novelty of it all. The ferry had left Rhodes while it was still dark and now at nine a.m. they lay quietly nursing their hangovers, feeling the throb of the engines in their churning liquid stomachs, eating oranges, quietly reading, quietly burning, entirely happy in each other’s silence.

Dexter cracked first, sighing and placing his book on his chest: Nabokov’s Lolita, a gift from Emma who was responsible for selecting all the holiday reading, a great breeze-block of books, a mobile library that took up most of her suitcase.

A moment passed. He sighed again, for effect.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Emma, without looking up from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

‘I can’t get into it.’

‘It’s a masterpiece.’

‘Makes my head hurt.’

‘I should have got something with pictures or flaps.’

‘Oh, I am enjoying it—’

‘ Very Hungry Caterpillaror something—’

‘I’m just finding it a bit dense. It’s just this bloke banging on about how horny he is all the time.’

‘I thought it would strike a chord.’ She raised her sunglasses. ‘It’s a very erotic book, Dex.’

‘Only if you’re into little girls.’

‘Tell me one more time, why were you sacked from that Language School in Rome?’

‘I’ve told you, she was twenty-three years old, Em!’

‘Go to sleep then.’ She picked up her Russian novel. ‘Philistine.’

He settled his head once more against his rucksack, but two people were by his side now, casting a shadow over his face. The girl was pretty and nervous, the boy large and pale, almost magnesium white in the morning sun.

‘Scuse me,’ said the girl in a Midlands accent.

Dexter shielded his eyes and smiled broadly up at them. ‘Hi there.’

‘Aren’t you that bloke off the telly?’

‘Might be,’ said Dexter, sitting and removing his sunglasses with a raffish little flick of his head. Emma quietly groaned.

‘What’s it called? largin’ it!’ The title of the TV show was always spelt in lower case, lower being the more fashionable of the two cases at this time.

Dexter held his hand up. ‘Guilty as charged!’

Emma laughed briefly through her nose, and Dexter shot her a look. ‘Funny bit,’ she explained, nodding towards her Dostoyevsky.

‘I knew I’d seen you on the telly!’ The girl nudged her boyfriend. ‘I said so, didn’t I?’

The pale man shuffled and mumbled, then silence. Dexter became aware of the chug of the engines and Lolitalying open on his chest. He slipped it quietly into his bag. ‘On holiday, are ya?’ he asked. The question was clearly redundant, but allowed him to slip into his television persona, that of a really great, down to earth guy who they’d just met at the bar.

‘Yeah, holiday,’ mumbled the man.

More dead air. ‘This is my friend Emma.’

Emma peered over her sunglasses. ‘Hi there.’

The girl squinted at her. ‘Are you on television too?’

‘Me? God, no.’ She widened her eyes. ‘Though it is my dream.’

‘Emma works for Amnesty International,’ said Dexter proudly, one hand on her shoulder.

‘Part-time. Mainly I work in a restaurant.’

‘As a manager. But she’s just about to pack it in. She’s trainin’ to be a teacher in September, aren’t you, Em?’

Emma looked at him levelly. ‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Like wha’?’ Dexter laughed defiantly, but the young couple were shifting uneasily, the man looking over the ship’s side as if contemplating the jump. Dexter decided to round up the interview. ‘So we’ll see you on the beach, yeah? Maybe get a beer or summink?’ and the couple smiled and headed back to their bench.

Dexter had never consciously set out to be famous, though he had always wanted to be successful, and what was the point of being successful in private? People should know. Now that fame had happened to him it did make a certain sense, as if fame were a natural extension of being popular at school. He hadn’t set out to be a TV presenter either — did anyone? — but was delighted to be told that he was a natural. Appearing on camera had been like sitting at a piano for the first time and discovering he was a virtuoso. The show itself was less issue-based than other shows he had worked on, really just a series of live bands, video exclusives, celebrity interviews, and yes, okay, it wasn’t exactly demanding, all he really did was look at the camera and shout ‘make some noise!’ But he did it so well, so attractively, with such swagger and charm.