The table was narrow. Two dinner plates would almost touch in its width. It was littered. A few bread crumbs, an ashtray, wine glasses, a box of wine, shreds of tobacco, rizlas, a lighter – the residue, the remainders, the late night, dawn-breaking survivors, like them, of a recently past meal.

Candles tossed their soft light across the scrubbed wood surface and their incandescent heads nodded in agreement with the words that drifted above them. It was a good place to be a candle. The kitchen was warm, its ceiling-high shelves were a subtle barricade and the over-arching music completed a shelter from some outer world. They, her and him, were safe within the halo of light the bobbing flames felt was enough to contain them.

That night many had talked in several rooms and rent the air with their strong feelings. It was an evening when fate had selected the party. The long man needed to release his anger. It was consuming him. He needed an excuse to demonstrate his pain, talk wildly and throw himself out into the cold night in righteous indignation. He needed the long walk to stamp his case into the world, so the earth would have to recognise his suffering. The red woman was needed to help him. Her gushing flow of words would not allow him a calm space to reason, and inadvertently she would open his wound wide enough for the cleansing fury.

The long man and the red woman had departed. Now only they remained, her and him. It was almost inevitable. They had a way of looking in each other’s eyes, not looking at each other, but in. And they had looked easily into each other since the start of the evening. And they could feel each other, the sense of each other. And they could be patient. It was as if, he speculated while watching her talk, a huge part of some journey was over and there was no pressure to do or say anything particular, like there was something ahead and it didn’t matter whether you arrived that night, that week or even that year.