His hair was flame coloured and devilish; his face was calm, composed. The goatee burned about his mouth uncertainly, like a smouldering ember that had jumped from the fiery ginger of his tight-kept hair onto the cold calm stone of his expression. All this gave him a look of peculiar intensity that drew her eyes to him again and again, irresistibly. She stared at him even when he noticed and smiled bravely at him – flirtatiously, passers-by might have said, in the way that young women do, sending subliminal signals of desire and attraction in the flicker of a smile, without really meaning to, without being aware that this smile was a flirty smile, this look a knowing look, these eyes come-to-bed eyes and so on. They only realise their earlier power, their earlier coquettish mannerisms when they are mature women, when flirting is much harder and the flicker of a smile will oft go unnoticed.

He did not smile back. Instead he looked at her with that intensity and she looked away. She got out a book from her bag – Orlando, suitably intellectual – and pretended to read it. On the bus she sat deliberately, provocatively in front of him. She was too nervous to say anything, so she continued reading and ignoring what she thought was the burning gaze of his eyes on the back of her neck.

“That looks complicated,” he said, and she turned eagerly.