"You dance well," she said.

"I don't -" he began, cleared his throat, "I don't usually dance all that much. I mean..." his voice trailed off. She smiled.

"You said you draw. You're at the School?"

"Yeah. Second year," he said, then bit his lip. Was he trying to prove how old he was? People sometimes said he had a baby face. He'd been questioned about his age in pubs several times. What age was she? What age did she think he was?

"What sort of things do you draw?" she said. He shrugged, relaxing a little; he had dealt with this sort of question before.

"What they tell me to. They give us exercises. What I really -"

"Graham, who is this lovely young thing?"

Graham looked round in despair at the sound of Mr Hunter's voice. Their host was a huge, lugubrious man, who reminded Graham of Demis Roussos. He was wearing some son of brown caftan. Graham closed his eyes. Mr Hunter was what he resembled: a refugee from the sixties. His fat hand squeezed Graham's shoulder. "You are a dark horse, young man." He swept forward towards Sara, almost hiding her from Graham. "Graham's obviously so speechless with you he won't introduce you to me. I'm Many Hunter - " (Marty? thought Graham) " - and I just wondered if you'd ever thought of doing any mod-"

At that point the lights went out, the music groaned in a deepening bassy slide, and people made appreciative animal noises.

"Oh fucking hell," Graham heard Mr Hunter say, and then something huge squeezed past him in the darkness saying, "that's Woodall; he always finds the mains switch at parties

Matches flared, lighters grazed sparks, just as, with a hiss, Sara came forward, hugged him. The lights flickered on before Graham could do more than put his arms round her. She pushed herself away again as soon as the lights came on, shook her head, looking down, her perfume still spiralling away between them. The music started again, people went "Aww..."

"Sorry," he heard her say, "I'm silly. I get frightened at thunder... too." She looked around, distracted, for the glass, but he was holding it, and handed it to her. Thanks," she said, and drank.

"Don't be sorry," he said, "I quite enjoyed it." She looked up briefly then, smiling uncertainly, as though she didn't believe him. He licked his lips, moved forward, put one hand out and touched hers where it gripped the glass. She kept looking at the empty glass, avoiding his face. "Sara, I -"

"Can we...?" she began, then looked quickly at him, put the glass on the mantelpiece, shook her head, saying, "I don't feel all that well..."

"What?" he said concernedly, taking her by one hand and a shoulder.

"I'm sorry, can I..." she motioned towards the door, and he helped her through the packed people, using his elbow to get them out of the way. In the hall they found Mr Hunter again, holding a slack, bored-looking black cat. He frowned when he saw them.

"You look rather pale," he said to Sara, then, to Graham, "Your friend isn't going to throw up, is she?"

"No, I'm not," Sara said loudly, raising her face. "Don't mind me; I'll just go and lie down in the snow or something..." She started as though to make for the front door, but Mr Hunter held up a hand to stop her.

"Not at all. I do beg your pardon. I'll find you... here, come with me." He put the cat on top of an old sofa which had been shoved against the hallway wall, and led Graham and Sara towards the stairs.

On the far side of Farringdon Road, Graham passed Easton Street, where another painter's or window-cleaner's cradle lay on the pavement, up-ended for some reason, neat coils of rope around it. Summer; the season for painting and scaffolding. Getting things done after the winter cover-up. He found himself smiling, recalling yet again that first meeting, that strange, almost hallucinogenic evening. He stepped past an old lady, standing still in the middle of the pavement, seemingly looking across the road at a man in elbow-crutches waiting to cross the street. Graham, almost automatically, tried to imagine drawing the scene.

"I saw Slater heading out the door with some rug-chested young Romeo," Mr Hunter said as they got to the second-floor landing in the big house. "I hope you weren't depending on him for a lift, were you?" he asked Graham. Graham shook his head. Slater didn't even drive, as far as Graham knew.

Mr Hunter unlocked a door and opened it, switching the room light on. "This is our little girl's room; you lie down, young lady. And take good care of her, Graham; I'll send my wife up to make sure you're all right." He smiled at Sara, then Graham, then closed the door behind them.

"Well," Graham said awkwardly as Sara sat down on the small bed, "that's us told." He bit his lip, wondered what he was supposed to do now. Sara put her head in her hands. He stared at the sooty-looking ball of black chaos that was her hair, wanting her, terrified of her. She looked up at him. He said, "Are you all right? What's wrong? I mean, do you... are you hurting?"

"I'll be okay," she said. "I'm sorry, Graham; you go back to the party if you want. I'll be fine."

He felt himself tense. He went forward, sat on the end of the bed with her. "I'll go if you want... but I don't mind just sitting. I don't want you... sitting here by yourself, all alone. Unless you want to be. I wouldn't enjoy myself anyway, I expect, I'd be thinking of you. I -"

He had been going to touch her shoulders with his arm, but she came towards him anyway, her head on his shoulders so that the perfume of her hair enveloped him, made his head feel light. She seemed to slump; it was not an embrace and her arms seemed heavy and slack. Her hands stayed in her lap, limp as puppet limbs. He held her, felt her shiver. He swallowed hard, looked round the room, at Snoopy posters, posters of horses in sunlit meadows, posters of Adam Ant and Duran Duran. A small white dressing table in one corner looked like something from a doll's house, gleaming and bright with tidy arrangements of bottles and jars. She shook again in his arms, and he realised she might be crying. He lowered his head to her hair instinctively.

She brought her head up, and her eyes were dry. She put her hands on the bedspread, looked into his eyes, an anxious searching as her gaze shifted about his face, first focusing on his right eye, then his left, then slipping to his mouth. He felt inspected, plumbed, and like a moth in front of some anti-lighthouse, casting a shadow-beam, making him want to pull back, fly away from the intensity of those black, searching eyes.

"I'm sorry, Graham, I don't want to be a tease," she said, lowering her head again, "I just need somebody to hold right now, that's all. I'm going through... oh," she shook her head, dismissing whatever she had been about to explain. He put his hand on hers.

"Hold me," he told her. "I know what you mean. I don't mind,"

Without looking at him, she slowly came closer again, then leant against him. Finally her arms went gently round his waist, and for a long time they sat there, while he listened to the sounds of the party, and felt - against his side, and within the perimeter his arm made around her - the gentle ebb and flow of her breath. Please, please, don't come now, Mrs Hunter. Not now, not in this perfect, fragile moment.

Steps thudded on the stairs, and his heart seemed to try to echo them, but the steps and some laughing voices went away. He held her, wrapped in her smell, warmed by her nearness. He felt drugged, by her perfume and her presence; he felt... like he had never felt in his life before.

This is absurd, he told himself. What is going on here? What is happening to me? Right now I feel more happy, more satisfied than in any post-coital daze. Those Somerset nights, in friends" cars, other people's houses, once in a moonlit field; my carefully scored and compared encounters to date; they all mean nothing. Only this matters.