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forehead as the overblown heating of the hotel attacks us in our outdoor clothes. He looks as if he’s been running or hurdling. I stroke the hair away. He’s so close, one little move from me and we will be kissing. But abruptly he presses one finger so hard against my mouth that it folds inwards and catches on my teeth.
    ‘I meant, we should get these things off.’
    I got it wrong. Fine. I’m rusty. Clueless. He closes his eyes for a moment, then whips off my beret. The roots of my hair prickle.
    Gustav moves slowly behind me and unwinds my blue scarf. So far, so harmless. So brotherly. But then he combs his fingers through my hair, starting at the base of my neck, and I shiver with uncontrollable, unexpected pleasure. He misreads my shivering for cold, or rejection, pauses as if waiting for me to stop him.
    ‘Please, don’t stop, Gustav,’ I moan quietly.
    He has no idea how this has calmed me, like a wild horse. I had no idea how someone stroking my hair would affect me. He stands very close. His tall body lines itself up behind mine, firm and unbending like the lamp post in the square. I push myself back against him. Oh, we fit so well. My bottom is just a little lower than his hips. His fingers go back to work. His hands are circling my throat loosely like a noose. I brush against the hardness in his trousers and it gives him away. My stomach curls over, my body tightening in dark agreement.
    Does he know I know? I tilt my head sideways. If I’m too shy to speak, how can I show him what I want, how I want the tips of his fingers to go on combing and stroking me, how I want him to stand nice and tight behind me, set my cold body on fire.
    He knows. He strokes my skin. He lifts my hair, unwinding it out of my collar as if it’s a magician’s endless rope or a charmer’s snake.
    ‘You have no idea,’ I breathe, my eyes fluttering closed as my hair lifts and curls round his fingers, strokes against my cheek and neck, sends its own minute promises of pleasure down my body, ‘how good that feels.’
    ‘My ragged Rapunzel,’ he breathes, so hot on the back of my neck. A squeal of excitement bunches in my throat. I bring my hands up to his, try to keep him there, get his warm mouth to press down onto me.
    But he steps away, leaving a cool space between us. My hair drops like a curtain.
    ‘Why have you stopped?’
    He comes round in front of me and puts his finger on my mouth. ‘It’s a crime to hide this amazing hair. And the colour, in this candlelight! Rossetti and those pre-Raphaelites would have had a name for it. A glorious Italian-sounding tint. Titian. Tintoretto. Not red. Auburn. Claret. Cinnamon.’
    ‘Five spice?’
    ‘And what about introducing this tangle to a pair of scissors, Calamity Jane?’
    I can’t help smiling. How has he managed to get under my skin so quickly? Is it because he’s taller and older, impossibly attractive with his own unruly hair and steady black eyes? He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met down there in my dreary old life by the sea. Is it the chameleon way he’s simultaneously courteous and mocking? Is it his deep voice or the way his face goes from cold to hot like running water, from dark to light like the changing hours?
    ‘Oh, I know all about scissors, believe me,’ I retort.
    A single hair he’s missed is caught in my eye and when he sees me blinking at it he hooks it away absently, familiarly, before he steps towards the reception desk.
    I’ve been growing it for years, but until I was big enough to fight them off my hair was an unkempt bird’s nest because they never understood how to treat it. They didn’t understand how to treat me . The night before each new school term they would shove me down on a hard chair as if I was Anne Boleyn being prepared for the block. He would hold me down while she would start chopping at it with a pair of kitchen scissors.
    No point wasting money on a hairdresser, it’s just ugly, dead material.
    I learned to control the