I touch the edge of it with my tongue: a piercing sweetness. Nibbling, the stuff seems to melt between my teeth. How could something that is food be so soft that it melts in your mouth without chewing? I don’t know any kind of food like that. Apart from ice. And that’s not exactly food. More nibbling, and I detect a lemony flavour, then a faint perfume. Even more nibbling, and a reluctant smile grows on my face; I feel saturated with sweetness. Something extraordinary is happening. It’s not until I’ve eaten all of the sweetmeat that I realise what it is: a sweet, fizzing feeling of joy, not unconnected with the girl.

Ha.

I lick the paper clean, then slide it carefully into my jacket pocket. This is something I won’t give my mother, though she would dearly love to feel such thin, soft paper between her fingers. No, this is a treasure to keep for myself.

3

The next morning, in the middle of the usual bustle – Babet tidying her bed and pestering Nanna for toast, Marina heading out to work in the Travester household where she cleans and scrubs, somebody digging in the patch of ground in the inner courtyard, people in the other rooms talking and moving about, so that the whole house seems to me like an ants’ nest waking up – Nanna shakes my foot.

“Jorzy has forgotten his goggles,” she says, peering into my cubbyhole with her sharp eyes that miss nothing. “Hurry and take them to him.”

I’m still groggy from sleep but get up and take the black-glass goggles from her. You don’t argue with Nanna. The men in Jorzy’s factory have to wear these goggles; otherwise the machinery will spit shards of metal into their eyes or over time the light will make them blind. It’s not like Jorzy to forget his goggles.Usually he goes to work at the factory with the goggles hanging round his neck.

Hurrying out into the glazed sunlight of early morning, I pause at the doorway to check the street for Black Marks. Two women, with empty baskets over their arms, seem to be heading off to the market. A milk cart rumbles past, its tray chock-full of the big metal urns that hold the milk. A kid runs behind holding out a bucket to catch the odd swish of milk that falls out of the urns. The old woman who sells newspapers, woollen shawl over her shoulders, sits on a stool at her usual corner. The Travester tobacconist is raising the shutters on his little shop. An airship drifts slowly overhead, and I can’t help watching its silent, regal progress. I love the airships, and dream of one day … But remembering the goggles, I break off from my daydream and hurry onwards.