Gemini. Mark Burnell

sure it would.’

      He offered her an old shirt of his. She pulled it around her damp body. When she said she was sorry, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. He asked if she needed a drink. She did but she declined. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him.

      ‘You know that feeling, when you’re almost asleep but not quite? And you’re not actually sure whether you’re awake or not. And then you picture yourself tripping or falling, and even though it’s your imagination your whole body lurches … that’s what it was like.’

      ‘I know the feeling. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

      Mark said it was okay. When it clearly wasn’t. Or, at least, shouldn’t have been. He should have asked questions. Or shouted. Something. Anything. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to. He understood without the details.

      From the very start there had been a condition, laid down in her bed in the hotel in the Dolomites. Don’t imagine you’ll ever get too close to me, Mark. No matter what happens to us, there are whole areas of my life that I will never be able to share with anyone. He’d said he didn’t care.

      Now, despite what she’d said, he had got close. Far closer than she could have anticipated. But not to her past. The condition remained intact.

      He opened a bottle of wine to soothe the tension. Later, he cooked for them and they relaxed a little, a second bottle helping.

      They went to bed just before midnight. With the curtains open, a street-lamp washed the ceiling dirty orange. They lay tangled together, her head on his chest, his fingers in her hair.

      He said, ‘You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.’

      ‘I’m not half as strange as you.’

      ‘I don’t think I’m strange.’

      She looked up at him. ‘Do you really think I am?’

      ‘One moment you’re one person, the next moment you’re somebody completely different. That seems to me to be strange. Then again, it is who you are.’

      ‘Trust me, Mark. You have no idea.’