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incredibly slowly and extremely lightly on her slight wrists. He embraced her softly and ran his thumb and fingers up Catherine’s arms in a circle of warmth and skin.
    She gasped, a tightly clasped birdcall of his name.
    ‘Jean?’
    ‘Yes, Catherine.’
    Jean Perdu felt a tremor run through her whole body. It came from her very centre, below her navel, a trembling and a rolling. It spread like ripples on water. He hugged her from behind, holding her tight.
    Her body was shaking, betraying the fact that it had been a long time, a very long time, since she had been touched. She was a bud trapped inside a calloused husk.
    So lonely. So alone.
    Catherine leaned back gently against him. Her short hair smelled good.
    Jean Perdu touched her even more lightly, just stroking the tips of the little hairs, the air above her bare arms.
    It’s so wonderful.
 
    More, begged Catherine’s body. Oh please, more; it’s been so long, I am thirsting. And please, no, not so hard. It’s too much, too much. I can’t stand it! How I’ve missed it. I could cope with missing it, until now. I was so hard on myself. But now I’m cracking, I’m trickling away like sand, I’m vanishing. So help me – carry on.
    Can I hear her feelings?
 
    The only sounds coming from her mouth were variations on his name.
    Jean. Jean! Jean?
    Catherine let herself fall back against him and surrendered to his hands. Heat coursed through his fingers. He felt as if he were hand and cock and feeling and body and soul and man and every muscle at the same time, all concentrated in each fingertip.
    He touched only what he could reach of her bare skin without moving her dress. Her arms, which were firm and brown where they emerged from her sleeves; he encircled them repeatedly, and moulded his hands to them. He stroked her nape, dark brown; her throat, delicate and soft; her magnificent, sweeping, hypnotic collarbone. He did this with the ends of his fingers, the tip of his thumb; he followed the contours of her muscles, both hard and soft, all with the tip of his thumb.
    Her skin grew ever warmer. He felt the muscles swelling underneath, felt Catherine’s whole body gaining in vivacity, suppleness and heat. A dense, heavy flower emerging slowly from its bud. A queen of the night.
    He let her name roll off his tongue.
    ‘Catherine.’
    Long-forgotten emotions shook off the crust of time inside him. Perdu felt a tautness in his lower abdomen. His hands had a better sense now not only of what they were doing to Catherine, but also of how her skin responded, how her body caressed his hands in return. Her body kissed his palms and his fingertips.
    How does she do that? What’s she doing to me?
 
    Could he carry and lay her down where her trembling legs would be able to rest, where he wanted to explore how her skin felt on her calves and behind the backs of her knees? Could he conjure further melodies from her?
    He wanted to see her lying there in front of him, eyes open, their gazes interlocking; he wanted to touch her lips with his fingers, and her face. He wanted her whole body to kiss his hands – every part of her body.
    Catherine turned around, eyes the grey of rain-laden storm clouds, wide, wild and turbulent.
    Now he lifted her up. She melded herself to him. He carried her into the bedroom, rocking her gently on the way. Her flat was the mirror image of his own. A mattress on the floor, a clothes rail in the corner, books, reading lamp – and a record player.
    His own reflection greeted him in the high windows – a faceless silhouette. Upright, though. Strong. A woman in his arms –
and what a woman.
    Jean Perdu felt his body shaking something off. An emotional mustiness, a blindness about himself. A desire to be invisible.
    I am a man
…
again.
    He laid Catherine on the simple bed, on the smooth white sheet. She lay there, her legs together, her arms by her sides. He stretched out on his side facing her, watched how she breathed and how her body trembled