The polar bear weighs 650 pounds and she is an official daughter of the Polish regiment. The men have a brightness to them. A luminosity to their eyes. They have seen too much. Baśka Murmańska has kept more than their spirit alive. She could kill any of them easily. They do not look at her with fear. Outside the bars men smoke and watch, unable to believe what they are seeing. Cloth caps, waistcoats. Smart jackets. Shoes shined so the scuff won’t show for a good half hour at least. They are all having a few pints and a nip before kick-off at Easter Road. Opposite them the soldiers mill around chatting to each other beside Baśka Murmańska.

That’s exactly how it was.

Flora needs to stop going back to this over and over again but she does not want those memories to fade.

She nods to the barman.

Accepts a second Gin Rickey and twists the stem in her fingertips. Flora can remember every second of that day nine years ago. It was the most important moment of her life. A man she had never met before walked up to her. He was eternity and she was the beginning of time. They had travelled 12.9 billion years to meet each other – at the end of Iona Street. There was some reason for him to say words. Flora said some back. It was all so polite. All the while another conversation was going on below that one. He was in uniform. It was the last day she would ever wear hers. War was almost done. They were ready. To forget. To make love. To walk back to a stranger’s flat and go to their bed.

She finishes her second cocktail.

Drinking too fast.

Always.

Nods at the barman again.

His face is watchable and kind. It’s not to be underrated in a man. He has a beard. Wild eyebrows frame warm eyes. His lips are too moist. He isn’t skinny. Flora can’t take that in a conquest. She should not be thinking like this! It’s bad. It is. She shouldn’t be getting drunk in the afternoon. She should not have had cocaine for breakfast and certainly not with champagne. Flora takes another tiny bump from a phial. Lets it sting her nose. Brighten her eyes. She warns herself. Behave, behave, behave! Do not fuck a stranger ten minutes before attempting a long-awaited possible reconciliation. It’s in the big reconciliation handbook! Don’t do it.

Her man from the beginning of time had taken her to bed. He made her feel more free than she thought it was possible to feel. He told her she was a chimera. It was the first time she had heard that word. There were other words before that. Freak, hermaphrodite, boy-girl, in-between. He was the first one to tell her she was not two things but one perfect creature made from stardust.