The girl frowned at her. She didn’t take the piece of paper. Norah left it on her blanket.

‘And if you see the woman or come across anyone who can tell me anything about her, then let me know. I urgently need to speak to her and I’d be happy to pay for it, okay?’

This time the girl replied. ‘Okay.’

As Norah walked away, she thought she felt someone looking at her, but when she glanced back, the girl was rummaging intently in a plastic bag. Norah could see nothing out of the ordinary, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched until she was safe in the office.

She left work early that afternoon. She was hungry and there were a few things she needed to sort out at the bank, so she bought herself takeaway rice noodles and ate them on the way.

She could still taste the spices as she queued up in the bank. She hadn’t made an appointment. The grimly clinical foyer was deserted apart from two bank clerks behind the counter—a man and a woman—and four customers in two lines. The female clerk was middle-aged, the man quite a bit younger, maybe in his mid-twenties, and so short and slight that he’d probably look like a fourteen-year-old even when he was ready for retirement. Norah got in his queue; he’d just finished serving a white-haired man in a checked suit. This elderly gent thanked him politely but, as he turned to go, he cast a glance of irritation at the woman waiting behind him. The boy at the counter, too, seemed troubled by the woman, so Norah had a closer look at her. She was tall, with slim legs in skinny jeans, and long black hair worn loose over a smart, navy-blue coat. It wasn’t until she spoke that Norah realised what had been bothering the two men: the woman was trans. Angered, Norah watched the gawping old man leave the bank. She thought of her friend Coco and their recent walk. Norah had talked her into going into town although her face was such a mess, and soon regretted it when she saw the way people stared.

She resolved to call Coco that evening and find out how she was and, coming back to the present, she heard the clerk asking the trans woman for some papers or other. Norah registered with annoyance that he was talking much louder than before, as if she were deaf.

‘Mr Gruber,’ he read out from the papers.

The woman said something that Norah didn’t catch.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ the clerk replied, still talking in an unnecessarily loud voice, ‘but it clearly says Mr here, doesn’t it?’

Norah’s tooth began to throb.

The man glanced at his colleague for approval. Norah saw her suppress a grin and felt herself growing hot. She couldn’t catch what was said next, but she saw the trans woman shrink under the bank clerk’s gaze so it wasn’t hard to guess. From the snatches she heard, she gathered that he was demanding extensive documentation from the woman, although all she wanted was to open a basic account.