The first time I met her, she was in my bed. She had a shock of hair that was bright green on one side and bright orange on the other. I didn’t know whether to make love to her or to dust my furniture with her; either way, I decided it would be courteous to wake her up first.

‘Screw off,’ were her first words to me. She rolled over and her feet came out the end of the bed. I didn’t need a tape measure to figure out she was tall, very tall – quite a bit taller than me; I ruled out dusting the furniture.

I shook her again gently. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ I said, ‘you’ve broken into my house and now you’re sleeping in my bed.’

‘How very observant you are,’ she replied sleepily. ‘Anyhow, what kept you?’

‘What kept me? Who the hell are you?’

‘Light me a cigarette, sit down and I’ll tell you.’ She had an Australian accent. It’s normally an accent I don’t care for, but she made it sound good. I lit a cigarette, handed it to her and sat down in the chair at the end of the bed.

‘If you’re that scared of me, why don’t you go stand in the street and I’ll shout to you through the window?’

It was one o’clock in the morning, I was feeling more than a little drunk, and my brain was taking a little time to figure out all this.

She sat up a little. ‘You can sit nearer,’ she said, ‘I won’t bite.’

‘None of you?’

‘I don’t like jokes about my height – I’m sensitive about it.’

I went and sat down beside her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know you were sensitive about your height. All I can see is your head and your feet – how do I know how much is in between?’

I looked at her face carefully. It was a sulky face, about twenty-four years old, with pouting lips and a small chin on top of a very long neck; she had rich blue eyes, with fair eyebrows, and a beautifully clear skin with the trace of a tan. She smiled, and the face sprang to life. Apart from a little mascara and a couple of dashes of rouge, she wore no makeup at all, and didn’t need to. Her hair really didn’t do her justice at all. She had the kind of face men shoot each other over.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

For a reply, I got a long deep kiss – in about forty different places. It was four o’clock in the morning before I was able to talk again.