Me obviously. Your brother owes me.

That’s true I said. It seems that he does. But he isn’t me. I’m not crazy about pizza.

But he’s your brother he said. You’re even twins right. By now his discreet whispering had escalated into illconcealed fury. It’s not right. It’s not honest behaviour. I have been kind to him and allowed him to buy from me when he had no money to pay me with.

That’s not very smart I said to have something to say.

He pulled the pizzas out of the oven and threw them noisily into folded cardboard boxes that he closed with angry hands. I still couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say. The doorbell pinged as I left.

We ate the pizzas and drank the highoctane booze. Around nine o’clock we were drunk enough to go out into the night and still sober enough to be let in. We took the shortest route to the 207rotunda. It had snowed enough to build up a twentycentimetre-thick layer. Jeanette took the lead and acted snowplough. The rest of us lined up after her by height like the von trapp family. I was last because I was the shortest. We even sang as we walked.

The band with the double name ulf&urban opened with something soft to get people up and out onto the huge rotunda.

Brightly patterned shiftdresses stood along one wall checking out the row of besttrousers opposite and were checked out in turn. At that point only a few couples were dancing.

A besttrouser made up his mind to brave the distance to shiftdressworld. Hundreds of eyes followed his brightred shirt. He had tied a cowboy strap round his neck instead of a tie. His dancefriendly shoes slid across the floor like skates on ice.

He was followed by other enterprising males. The couples took to the floor until it was filling up nicely. The rows of waiting people thinned out. The wallflowers were left behind their hands sticky with sweat. I was one of them. By accepting sociable invites from my workmates I had managed to ignore my awareness of being alien but it came back now. I stood among the fat ones and the shy ones with outsider branded on my forehead. One of those who would be picked last. For the netball team and so on for ever and ever.

Would you like to dance.

At first I hadn’t realised that he was addressing me. A besttrouser had turned up out of the blue and was holding out his hand. He wanted to dance with me. I wiped my palm on my hip and said yes sure.