Not long after, she’d approached him as he smoked between the bay trees in the central court and they’d exchanged some pleasantries about their projects. She’d let him take her to the union refectory for lunch: they’d both had onion soup and hadn’t finished it. Conversation wasn’t only stilted, it was flat. The next day, she’d brought in a biscuit tin of corned-beef sandwiches and sat beside him on a park bench in the square, giving him the greater portion, saying she hadn’t made them with herself in mind. On each of these occasions, he’d wished that he could simply talk about it – tell her where he’d come from, what he’d been through – but the subject hung around them like the heaviest of weather. How could he be frightened of destroying something that was not yet formed? And what relationship had ever been improved by smothering the truth? He was failing with her in the same way he was failing at his lettering: so anxious to progress that he was getting worse at each attempt.

Throughout the Christmas break, he’d thought about her constantly. He’d spent the last few weeks entombed in his damp room on Prescot Road, awakened every morning by the clamour of the bakery below at five a.m., the scent of bread advancing from the gaps between his floorboards. He’d completed his assignments by the light of gas lamps, wrapped himself in every blanket that he owned, reliant on the kettle for enough hot water every night to wash and shave. All those hours he’d studied Johnston’s pages, trying to reproduce the elegance and deftness of the serifs, she’d been on his mind. A welcome apparition. Florence Greaves – her face kept visiting, disrupting him – Florence Greaves – the deep wave in her hair, its shine – Florence Greaves – the freckle pattern rambling across her nose, the two front teeth that rested on her lip when she was thinking – Florence Greaves – the quickness of her pencil marks, their gentleness, and the conviction she applied to everything: her speech, her art, her education, her deportment – Florence Greaves – the hyacinth and cherry blossom of her body passing through the studio – Florence – how she looked at him, as though she wanted to be haunted in return.

*

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he told her, as she settled in the space beside him. ‘I should’ve given it to you before you left but, well, it took me most of Christmas to get right.’

She had no gift for him, although she’d almost bought a pullover in Lewis’s and left it on the cashier’s counter, deeming it presumptuous and foolish. (A pullover? What sort of message would it send? She might as well have given him a bar of soap or breath mints.) Their lecture hadn’t started yet, but Mr Flynn was waiting at the blackboard, shuffling his papers. She’d overslept and missed her tram, arriving fifteen minutes later than she wanted to – which meant she wasn’t fifteen minutes early for a change. There’d been an empty seat on the front row, reserved for her by Arthur. ‘Happy New Year,’ he said brightly. ‘It doesn’t feel much different from the last one so far.’