‘And what am I?’ asks Cordelia, grinding out her cigarette. She feels combative, irritated, unsure whether she’s being tested or teased.

‘I believe the popular phrase used by your apparent betters is “lebbage”. Latin, of a sort. Think hoi-polloi. The great unwashed. The masses.’ He clicks his fingers as if searching for the right word. ‘The poor.’

‘I heard “Plebian” a lot at university,’ she says, with a slight smile. ‘I heard “slattern” a lot too.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Terrifying to them, I shouldn’t wonder. They wouldn’t know what to make of a girl like you.’

‘A woman, you mean,’ she replies, with a twitch of her lips.

‘Touché,’ he replies, and stoops, holding his side, to pick up a rock that has caught his attention. He turns it over and over as if checking it for something and then wrinkles his nose, throwing it away. He winces a little, as if the action has pained him.

‘Not what you were hoping?’ asks Cordelia. She feels an inexplicable warmth towards this man. There’s something oddly genuine about him; as if he can play any role required of him without ever really changing his fundamentals. She envies him. Wonders if, should everything go the way she’d like it to, she will be able to maintain who she truly is.

‘It will be hard for you, Cordelia,’ he says, the smile fading as he looks into her eyes; a sudden intensity about him. ‘They won’t want you to do well. They won’t ever trust you. They don’t trust me and I’m one of them. I have feelings, you see. I actually believe we have certain moral imperatives. I have this bizarre notion that in a world where we are no longer a true power, we can at least be influential. We could, for example, fight the good fight. We could help people regardless of political affiliation. It’s a fanciful notion but in you, in people who care about decency first and queen and country second, I see something that breathes on the dying embers of my optimism.’

‘The dying embers of your optimism?’ repeats Cordelia, with a grin. ‘Jesus, Hinny, you’ve got quite the turn of phrase. You’re a poet and ya divvent know it.’