Emee, up ahead, has ducked in among the trees. There is a sheltered place, a clearing, almost hidden from the pathways. She flops onto the leaf-strewn ground and sets the dog down.

“I always come here,” she says theatrically, “when I want to think.”

Joining her on the spongy ground, my first impulse is to laugh at Emee and her soft Travester ways. But as always with her, my curiosity gets the better of me. She is an alien species, about which I know nothing. There’s something else about her too, something hidden that I don’t understand.

“What sorts of things do you think about?” I ask, playing the game.

“Oh, you know,” she says airily, leaning back on her hands, “life.”

She is baffling. Why bother thinking about life?

“What about it?”

“Weeeeell,” she drawls. “What is our purpose in life, for example. I mean, is there a reason we are all living in this city, apart from just working and going to parties? That kind of thing.”

I poke at the ground with a stick. It’s not something I’ve ever wondered before. “And what did you come up with?”

“Oh, I haven’t decided yet. Perhaps it’s something to do with learning.”

“Learning?”

“Yes, you know, learning something special about each other, and the world we live in.” She fixes me with a pale gaze. The sun coming through the leaves throws a hazy golden light over her that makes her seem insubstantial, like one of Jorzy’s marsh fairies.

The stick breaks under my hand and I throw it away. How does she always manage to make me feel small? As far as I’m concerned, you live, end of story. There is no greater meaning to it than that. You either live well, or it doesn’t go so smoothly. Other things can interfere with your life, though, and that seems to me to be the main problem. It’s called survival, according to Jorzy. But I have a feeling Emee won’t understand about that.

The little dog, its back leg cocked, pisses on a clump of grass. That’s probably the real meaning of life.

Emee’s still looking at me, expecting something witty. “So, what do you think?”

Is this the kind of thing she and her friends debate – the meaning of life? I try to sort some words into order. “I think we learn something new every day.”

“Oh, yes!” She grins happily. “That’s exactly it.”

And it feels like I’ve won a prize. One minute she’s exasperating, the next I’m infatuated all over again. The trees flutter their leaves above my head and I feel a little drunk, like the time I stole a cup of apple cider from the Black Marks’ barracks. It spurs me on to greater heights. “I think … that, in the end, we are all brothers and sisters, and should treat each other kindly.”