– I am, that’s true.

She takes him by the hand over to the bar, flushed, both dress straps down, stockings gone, lips red as her cheeks, she takes two clean glasses and a small silver spirit measure.

– French 75, ta, doll!

Flora adds three parts Edinburgh gin, one part fresh lemon juice which she squeezes out by hand, a spoonful of sugar powder, then champagne. Tops both glasses until they fizz. It is so cold and crisp on the tongue. The feeling of her ex-lover’s kiss on the nape of her neck pulls her in again. They kiss – hot and cold, lemon and gin, champagne and tobacco.

– Come on, into my room. I’ve got it clear, just for you.

He unlocks his door and they disappear into the familiar dim. Sit down on the edge of the bed. All the shoes and suits are gone. He looks sad. Concerned.

– I’m unsteady without you, he says.

– No, yer not.

They lay down, face to face, noses touching, small light kisses.

– I’ve done worse than just hurt you, I know. It doesn’t feel okay, Flora. You are not someone I will get over. Not ever. Not now, not in ten years, not in twenty. I love you so much I don’t even understand it. I know I wounded you. I did much worse than not turn up.

Flora can’t speak.

They have never done this conversation.

He whispers to her so quietly.

His eyes are blue-black in the dim light.

The city is falling asleep around them.

All those lights, from all those souls, are just so fragile – they need to be tended to, protected, cupped in two hands. A huge moon slides down toward the horizon. The glow of their lights reaches out to each other always. From one part of the city to the other. Even over the sea. Through time. The light people come from – what souls emanate and society can’t yet see – is what they all reach for and miss when it is gone. When a person’s own light is dimmed. When a soldier takes a polar cub to a woman to try and see light in her eyes but she has already found her light in another. Or when a polar cub protects the light in hundreds of soldiers – is able to restore their light to them or to keep it flickering longer – until they go home to their children who also hold their own light. When someone lays in a bed with the wrong one and they miss a light they feel they might never know. But sometimes on a street – or in a bar or in a bedroom – those first bits of light separated out – find each other again.

1939

Flat 3F3

Levi (32) fear fir the mermaid