After a minute, it occurred to me that I was being rude, staring off into the distance, like I wasn’t listening, like I wasn’t branding these words into myself, turning them into a part of me.

And I was afraid to turn around and match a face to the voice, afraid with a half-formed fear of never being able to look away. But I looked anyway.

Blitzkrieg.

The tousle of his hair, the pink pooling in the centre of his mouth, the line of his neck as he turned his head towards me—a straight, strong arrow from the lobes of his ears to the collar of his shirt.

The contraction of my heart with the spreading of his smile. I resorted to the stupid pseudo-philosophy of not being able to think straight. ‘So we’re cursed, then? We hold ourselves prisoners?’

‘Would you like to dance?’

‘Now?’

He motioned to the air around. ‘It helps with the overwhelming.’

I fumbled for a way to destroy the moment, because really, how do you let something that perfect be?

So, I shrugged. ‘There’s no music, dude.’

He moved a step closer. We would dance.

Smiling now, I said, ‘You’re quite mad yourself, you know.’

‘Nietzsche, my dear girl.’

‘What?’

He laughed and held out his hand, like something out of a movie, like the best scene in the novels I read hidden between pages of textbooks, like the boy who drew Caroline to a burning ship.

‘May I?’

He waited till I nodded a nervous yes to take my left hand in his right. Then he put his other hand on the small of my back and silly me, I hadn’t noticed—the music was in the movements. It had been there all along.

He began humming a tune as we started moving. Locked in the space between his arms and a buttoned expanse of Wedgwood blue, I could suddenly smell his aftershave, a scent that I vaguely remembered loving as a child. We were dancing a waltz before I could think another thought. Viennese, as I would find out later. Well, he was dancing the Viennese waltz, anyway. I was merely moving to his ebb and flow.

Whatever he was humming sounded familiar.

‘Where is this from?’ Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was surprised that I had spoken.

He looked past my shoulder and whispered in my ear, ‘Why, it’s the waltz from The Godfather.’

The humming had stopped, but my body was already used to the rhythm; three beats, a turn, one way, then another. I tried to imagine myself not quite as me; prettier, surer, dancing the song along a wide castle ballroom, a princess chosen by the prince . . . some scene from a movie watched and forgotten long ago.

‘Do you know, this is the first time I’ve danced with someone whose name I don’t know.’

‘Tara. Well, Nayantara, but that’s too many syllables.’