The streets were busy, the bars spilling out their customers on to the streets, taxi queues stretching off the pavements, the air rich with the scent of spices from the kebab shop they passed. Police officers milled about in pairs, high-visibility jackets and soft caps. It still took Tony by surprise to see them unarmed, without bullet-proof vests and an army escort. This, he thought with a stab of resentment, must be what it’s like living somewhere normal.

Karen walked beside him, her arms wrapped round herself for heat, the light jacket she wore no respite from the deepening chill of the early spring night. Tony walked close beside her, hoping to recreate the physical proximity of the party, but she hugged herself tighter. Finally, he took off his coat and draped it round her shoulders. She smiled, gratefully, staggered a little, whether with the wine, or her heels, or by design, and he found his arm around her, her body, still shivering lightly, close beside his.

They waited for the bus together, sitting side by side on the plastic seat in the shelter. Once, he felt he might have a chance to kiss her. He’d told some story about a party at university, one that even he realised lacked any real punchline or relevance to anyone who had not been in attendance at the time. Yet she had held his gaze, her head tilted a little to one side, her brown hair falling across her eyes so that she had to try to blow it away with a puff of her breath. He leaned towards her, saw an almost imperceptible change in her expression, then saw a more obvious shift as she stood. ‘The bus is here,’ she said.

On the bus, she sat across two seats, her back against the window, her legs outstretched, her feet just over the edge of the seat. Tony swung into the seat behind her and, leaning on the handrail, continued their conversation. But the opportunity to kiss had passed. He’d paid for the bus for them both and now handed her one of the tickets. She took it, then returned it to him. ‘You can keep it,’ she said. ‘My gift to you.’

‘You’re all heart,’ Tony laughed, taking the ticket back, putting it in his pocket, his own balled up and lying on the floor.

In the brighter light of the bus, he could see her better now and realised that her eyes were two different colours, one green, one a light hazel.

‘I’m a chimera,’ she laughed when he told her this.

‘I’m a Gemini,’ he said. ‘What’s a chimera?’

‘I’ve two sets of DNA. I think it means that I was to be twins in my mother’s womb but we merged or something. Or I ate my twin.’

‘That’s gross,’ Tony said, pantomiming disgust as he sat back in his seat, away from her.

‘My daddy used to say to me, to tell any boys I met when I grew up that I ate my own twin. That I was not to type of girl to mess with.’