Her fingers graze the blade of my hand. It is our first contact, skin on skin. Not really first contact, I suppose, because she put a bag over my head, so technically we have touched before. But it is the first contact that is real, between persons, tacit permissions given by the working of the social world. Her hand plucks my sleeve to hasten me out of the way, and she presses me to one side with her hip. It is done innocently and spontaneously, as between old friends, but it is not like that at all. It is as if I have been reattached to mains power after a lifetime on batteries. I am alive, truly alive. I see in colour, hear in quadrophonic stereo. My breath stops. I can feel her. I know her weight and her balance, the tenor of her muscles and bones. I feel her fingertips against my wrist, the curve of her body where it traps me against the stone wall, the rhythm of her heart inside her. Stella’s hip, that I have held and kissed, moving as Stella moved it, in the ineffable signature of one person’s way, known only to dance partners and lovers.