IT WOULD be an odd kind of person who actually counted the number of times he and his wife had sex on holiday. I counted 0 for 12 days. Our two weeks in Belize had ended up being busier than work — we’d hiked through jungle, waded through caves, ridden horses, tracked boars and dodged tarantulas. When it came to bedtime, there was only one thing on our minds: sleep. I sure was “ready” for our last two days down by the Caribbean, playing in the sea, eating dinner in our boutique resort’s luxury restaurant, then walking barefoot back to the thatched cabana, hand in hand ...

The romantic mood was shattered on the first day when one of the baby raccoons died. Everything about the place was perfect — white-sand, blue-sea, secluded-huts perfect. There was just one fly in the ointment. The boutique resort was run by someone who proudly told us, in their Italian-Spanish-German accent, “I know nothing about holiday. I work in fashion 12 years. But fashion and holiday — same thing, no?” No, indeed. Everything looked great, but nothing worked. The management’s dogs ran wild through the place, jumping all over everyone and everything. Dinner turned up very, very fashion-ably late. Nothing was properly clean. And the other pets — a poor raccoon litter — were checking out one by one. Call me callous, but as we sat in reception on the elegant sofa/dog bed, barefoot, the Caribbean Sea gently licking the beach, my wife crying, I knew things weren ’t going my way.

All of a sudden, two quick surprises. First, my wife took my hand and said: “It’s the last night of our holiday. Let’s go back to the cabana. Now.” Second, immediately following the first, a more intrusive surprise: an intense needle-stab of pain halfway down my ... well, just imagine exactly where you don’t want a sharp stab on the last day of a holiday with your wife when you’ve had no special time together what- soever. My wife confused my limping run back to the cabana with enthusiasm. I did want to get my shorts off, but for completely different reasons to those she did.

When my wife caught up with me, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my pants round my ankles, leaning the bedside lamp across to get a good look at myself.

With a fair bit of agility and a good stretch of the cord of the bedside lamp, I could see the smallest of small red spots on the side of my wounded soldier. Some flea or tick or little bloodsucker had taken a bite out of me. It didn’t hurt now, and you couldn’t really see it unless you looked closely, but there was a tiny dark-red blood blister.

As soon as I explained what was wrong to my wife, she had a strange kind of sneezing-coughing attack and had to vanish suddenly into the bathroom. Others might have described it as the giggles.

I coaxed my wife out of the bathroom, had a thorough shower, regrouped my morale and eventually, despite all that had taken place, and after 12 wonderful days and one terrible one in Belize, we made love. It was everything it should have been, just the two of us lying under that thatched cabana roof, the sound of the Caribbean crashing on the white sand outside.

The next morning, sunlight flooded into the bedroom. We stretched, and admitted we were ready to go home. My wife packed and showered and I bent over to take one last, close-up look at that blood blister.

It had legs.

And eyes. And tiny pincers.

That relatively innocent red blister was, in fact, the blood-gorged critter itself. The tick had dug in and hung on through thick and thin. It was still wriggling away happily.

I think the whole resort heard my yell as I dug my nails in and pulled the tick out. When my wife ran back into the room, I was standing there naked with tears in my eyes. She wanted to know what had happened.

Could I really tell her the truth? I sheepishly pointed down to where her suitcase had “slipped” off the bed and onto my foot.

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