Tahiti,
by lagoon.

Twenty-fifth anniversary, and we wanted the cliché. The overwater villa, the lagoon. Done properly rather than apologised for. Tibro put us on Mo'orea first, which we had not heard of, and it turned out to be the half of the trip we talk about: a boatman took us to a sandbar where rays came up to our knees, unbidden. Bora Bora after that was the postcard, exactly as promised. The villa they chose, against a cheaper one we asked about, was worth every rupee of the difference.

We travelled with our two adult children and braced for a logistics headache across the islands. There was none. Every transfer, including a small inter-island flight, was handed to us on a single sheet that simply worked. Otemanu from the water at dawn is the photograph my son will not stop printing. The designer answered a question about diving certification within the hour, from a very different time zone.

A honeymoon we had saved years for, and I was terrified of it being a let-down after the build-up. It was not. The studio paced it so the first island was quiet and green and the second was the lagoon we had dreamed about, and the order mattered more than I can explain. A handwritten note and a bottle were waiting in the villa on the night of our wedding date, which we had mentioned once, months earlier.