She took both ties, and standing on tiptoe, draped first one then the other around his neck. Her fingers grazed his skin, that sensitive spot just above the collar, and bliss bombs bolted down his spine. When she decided on the maroon — it was the more attractive pattern, she said, and it also complemented his colouring — all he could do was nod. It was only as she turned to leave that he managed to find his voice. ‘Would you meet me? After work? For a drink? Or tea, if you’d prefer?’

Sylvie had never before approached a strange man, and she certainly had never shoplifted one — the term she always used when describing their first meeting. In the normal run of her life, she presented as a nicely brought-up middle-class girl. She was a loving sister to Maggie, a devoted daughter to her warm, sweet-tempered mother, and a patient one with her hard-to-please, impatient father. She was popular, she was pretty, and while she was cleverer than girls were expected to be in the 1950s, she was adept at dampening down her intelligence. Presenting a calm and cheerful disposition, despite her difficult father, despite the disappointments of life, despite her fears of A-bombs and H-bombs, Sylvie Stirling was in all respects a young lady. So she was even more surprised than Leonard when she approached him in the Myer menswear department.

‘Let me help you,’ she said.

Leonard heard the words and took in the speaker. She was small, elfin, in fact, with fair hair tied in a ponytail, and the largest, bluest eyes he had ever seen. Luck, having shunned him for the first twenty years of his life, had been his constant companion since moving from Perth to Melbourne. Friends, a great job, and now this bombshell of a girl.

Their courtship began that very evening. He took her to the ladies’ lounge of a hotel of which even the strictest parents of a well-brought-up girl would approve, and over a Pimms for her and a beer for him, they started to get to know each other.

Her parents were from New Zealand; they had moved to Australia when she, the younger of two sisters, was six.

Leonard was the younger of two brothers; his parents had moved from England to Perth the year before he was born. Then, four years ago, he’d crossed the continent to Melbourne.

‘Both of us are Melbourne immigrants,’ he said.

Sylvie wouldn’t have cared if Leonard were from outer space, she was already smitten. He was large and good-looking, with thick hair and a lush moustache — rather like Clark Gable, she thought. A businessman who wrote poetry, he was a man of practicality as well as passion. She’d been denied the stimulation of university study, she’d been denied the excitement of an independent career, but everything about Leonard Morrow struck her as stimulating and exciting.