My amazing Filipina girl

Dubai airport teemed with people. Twenty-four hours without sleep and my stinging eyes skinted in the sharp desert. Arabs in white robes milled around the transfer lounge, and it crossed my mind that I could be stoned to death there for what I was doing. Fatigue was making me paranoid. Could the guy who served me a weak cappucino in Costa read my thoughts? I tried to read Time magazine and put all thoughts of sex out of my head, just in case.

Three hours later, I boarded the Manila plane. The whole situation became more real when I looked around me to see that the whole economy cabin was packed with Filipinos. And here was I; a blue eyed white boy in a sea of weathered brown faces heading home to their families. I didn't belong on their plane, let alone in their world.

It was pushing midnight when I dragged my suitcase through the dated arrivals hall in Manila airport, but it could have been any time of day. Stepping through the doors into a drizzly night, the sultry heat pressed on my face like a hot towel. Cities have a smell, and Manila's was pungent and thick, rising up from the pavements and drains, and pervading everything. I looked around for that face I'd seen a hundred times on a webcam. Nothing. No one looked familiar. All I could see was movement; of taxis; of people; of security; of traffic. Where was she? I looked back through the arrival hall's doors but I couldn't see her, or anyone remotely like her. My head started to swim, and a wave of fatigue and nausea washed over me. She wasn't there. A thousand quid on travel and hotels and she wasn't there. I was a fool. I felt like crying; not through sadness but of anger; not at her, but at myself. But I still had some hope left - maybe she had got lost; maybe the taxi had broken down?

I pulled out my phone. Nothing. I scanned in vain for local networks, but my little Nokia couldn't find them. Payphone, I thought. There must be a payphone inside! But I couldn't get inside. "No entry!" the security guard said. I was out and had to stay out. Where the hell she? I sat on my case and lit the first cigarette in what seemed like days, and I saw the rest of my trip unfold with startling clarity.. a night or two alone in a Manila hotel, then a rebooked flight back to London.