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for coloured paper seems pointless. All sense of purpose, of responsibility, indeed of any imaginable future, were removed from her by the deaths of her husband and child. It was they who used to make her life a story ; they who seemed to be giving it a beginning, a middle and an end. Nowadays, her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date, full of meaningless events for Colonel Leek to recite when no one’s paying attention. For all the use she is to Society, beyond intercepting the odd squirt of sperm that would otherwise have troubled a respectable wife, she might as well be dead. Yet she exists, and, against the odds, she is happy. In this, she has a clear advantage over the young woman you are about to meet.
    ‘Shush?’
    Caroline has paused in front of a poky, gloomy stationer’s on her way back down Greek Street, because inside the shop she’s caught sight of – is it really? – yes, it’s Shush, or Sugar as she’s known to the world at large. Even in the gloom – especially in the gloom – that long body is unmistakable: stick-thin, flat-chested and bony like a consumptive young man, with hands almost too big for women’s gloves. Always this same first impression of Sugar: the queasy surprise of seeing what appears to be a tall, gaunt boy wreathed from neck to ankle in women’s clothes; then, with the first glimpse of this odd creature’s face, the realisation that this boy is female.
    At the sound of her nickname, the woman turns, clutching to her dark green bodice a ream of white writing paper. There’s a bosom in that bodice after all. Not enough to nourish a child perhaps, but enough to please a certain kind of man. And no one has hair quite as golden-orange as Sugar’s, or skin quite as luminously pale. Her eyes alone, even if she were wrapped up like an Arabian odalisque with nothing else showing, would be enough to declare her sex. They are naked eyes, fringed with soft hair, glistening like peeled fruits. They are eyes that promise everything.
    ‘Caddie?’
    The shadowy woman raises a green glove to her brow and squints at the sunlight beaming in from the street; Caroline waves, slow to realise that her friend is blinded. Her waving arm causes shafts of light to sweep back and forth over the cluttered rows of shelving, and Sugar squints all the more. Her head sways from side to side on its long neck, straining to find who has called out to her through the thorny confusion of quills, pencils and fountain pens. Shyly – for she has no business here – Caroline steps into the shop.
    ‘Caddie!’
    The younger woman’s expression, in recognising her old friend, glows with what so many men have found irresistible: an apparent ecstasy of gratitude to have lived to experience such an encounter. She rushes up to Caroline, embraces and kisses her, while behind the counter the stationer grimaces. He’s embarrassed not so much by the display of affection but by the blow to his pride: serving Sugar, he had taken her for a lady and been rather obsequious to her, and now it appears, from the commonness of her companion, that he was wrong.
    ‘Will that be all, madam?’ he harrumphs, affectedly sweeping a small feather duster over a rack of ink bottles.
    ‘Oh yes, thank you,’ says Sugar in her sweet fancy vowels and scrupulous consonants. ‘Only, please … if you’d be so kind … I wonder if it could be made a little easier for me to carry?’ And she transfers the ream of paper – slightly rumpled from the bosom-to-bosom embrace – into his hands. Scowling, he wraps the purchase in pin-striped paper and improvises a carry-handle of twine around it. With an ingratiating coo of thanks Sugar accepts the parcel from him, admiring his handiwork, demonstrating with a sensuous stroke of her gloved fingers what a good job he has done. Then she turns her back on him and takes her friend by the arm.
    Out in the sun, up close, Caroline and Sugar appraise each other while pretending not to. It’s