Should Lanterns Shine.

The sassy smooth jazz hit him like a solid wall of sound. It was like stepping through, stepping straight through a wall into another world. After Hours, they were playing, the live band.

Live music. When was the last time he'd heard live music?

The thought of Vera on that underground podium with a big white rose in her hair only made him nauseous.

Tastefully lit, the auditorium didn't look half bad. People were already dancing; tables littered the outer perimeter like islands. Couples and groups sat engaged in eager conversation. The spirit of liberty, of safety, had infected every one of them. They were all so happy, and lively, full of life. Bursting with life. Colours were like carnations everywhere you looked, stinging of vivid, celebratory life. The room seemed to spin around him a little. The ale wasn't quite so heavy in his belly; he hadn't drank half as much as usual.

He had been clinging to a pillow for so many nights.

He'd been missing all of this, for that?

Some of the old glamour was diffusing back into his veins, stealthily, gently. In a place like this he could see himself as he was. He could imagine himself away from the last few years. Rewind all the way back to before he used to go and watch her sing, when he would smirk as girls fluttered their lashes at him, when he would wear the khaki uniform on the street with a nonchalant and charismatic self-satisfaction, knowing they would forgive him for it. Knowing he was loved.

He started as he realised his work mates had moved into the crowd without him, and then hurried after.

They were skirting the dance floor in search of somewhere to sit down, set up camp and plan their targets for the evening, as it were. A hundred skirts swirled in the tightly packed place. A hundred smiles of all pinks and reds flashed in motion.

"Hey!"

He stumbled backwards from the collision, slightly winded, instantly on edge. His nerves shuddered with horror.

He wasn't so good at taking shocks any more.

"Hey," said the voice again, "I'm talking to you!"

He focused on the pristine black jacket, above which hovered a ruddy face and blonde plastered hair. An indignant gentleman expecting an apology for an accident William was still processing. He looked for his friends through the mass; they were seated and laughing already, not noticing his absence.

"I was in a rush."

"You interrupted my dance! And nearly got me in the gut, at that!"

"I'm sorry."

Behind the fellow's shoulder he abruptly caught a glimpse of russet curls, pinned up in a crown of gorgeous natural complexity.

Then a pair of startling blue eyes appeared, flashing with long dark lashes. A button nose and then a sumptuously amused mouth lingered beneath.

The rose petal lips parted and moved. They said, "Leave him alone, Gerald."

"Don't be nice to the guy!"

"It wasn't his fault. Stop ruining the fun."

Gerald looked put out.

William looked, for want of a more delicate word, shell-shocked.

The cobalt dress that fell softly round her shoulders and nipped in at the waist made her irises positively glow with enhanced colour. Her cheekbones were dusted with the same heavenly pink as her lipstick. She looked like a china doll – except that no doll could ever capture that mischievous pixie smile she threw at him while her partner fumed over his predicament.

William was surprised how quickly he recovered himself under that bold blue gaze. How vivified, how ripe it made him, with bolts of pleasurable electricity like injections of warmth into his body, into his ego.

He felt about twenty. And she looked it.

"Terribly sorry," he reiterated for her sake only, feeling his voice coming from a new place, deeper, louder in his chest. He felt the old rumble of charming sound vibrating through him from that deeper place, and let the corners of his own mouth lift as they wanted to. The smile was also in his voice.

She gleamed back at him in her eyes, and he knew that he had gotten her attention.

Poor Gerald was too busy looking pompously at William with the kind of expression that very distinctly and silently said will you bloody bugger off. William finally took heed, nodding to the both of them before slowly backing away.

He sauntered to the table where his work mates hailed him with whistles and jeers, having finally noticed where he was and what he was doing.

Shaking his head – how long had it been since he'd felt this kind of comradely embarrassment, over a girl? – he sat among them and tried to melt into the background, already retreating into himself in the absence of those eyes that fed him confidence. But he was himself again.

He felt it keenly.