I slid my hand into his before I knew what I was doing. His palm was warm and solid and unexpectedly large. I dared a glance over my shoulder searching for that mop of dirty blond hair I didn’t want to see coming through the crowd. “Can I help you?” the guy beside me asked, glancing down at our joined hands, then at me. I turned to face him, my eyebrows shooting up my forehead.

Somewhere, in a parallel universe,
It’s still just you and me.
Somewhere, we’re still neighbours,
riding our horses through the ghost gums.
Zigzagging through constellations like dried out riverbeds
at the back of your farm.

Pera Palace Hotel, Istanbul, 1935

It was his moustache I noticed first. As with all men with modern moustaches, his was rather well-groomed. But the face was of a man I was not expecting to see. I shook so hard I thought I would lose a limb; the way Cinderella lost her glass slipper running from the ball.