22 & not a clue

She had the kind of beauty that doesn't need or ask for make up. Three small brown moles on her wrists which were slender with thin brown hair which caught the light - perhaps she had been in the sun recently. Her long legs were folded under her, she sat on the tube as if they were on a sofa. She leant against a thick browed man who appeared to be miles away.

Every few seconds her head would lift up and she would stare at him and say something with a smile on her lips. He would nod and continue to stare off. The smile would leave the corner of her mouth and thin lines appeared across her forehead. Digging around in her handbag she produced a note and laughed, showing it to him. He eventually turned and looked at the note, his eyes moved upwards and finally met hers which were dancing in a beguiling way.

A slow and uncertain smile made its way across his swarthy face, catching the shadows from his facial hair. His back softened and he seemed to lean in towards her smile. She leant her head again on his shoulder. He lifted one hairy paw and stroked a few brown strands across her face, tucking them behind her ear and then stroking her neck.

She smiled.

She stood up too quickly as the tube juddered to a halt coming into the station, bouquet in one hand and a kiss on the other blown to a somewhat bemused looking young man. She smiled and bounced off onto the platform. He put his head in his hands, rubbed his face and looked up smiling.

His hair looked unkempt and it appeared he wasn't much of a sleeper. She had had her hair in a pony tail, diamante earrings but a rain coat; the sensible but sweet type. They may have been on a date, his lingering smile told me as much. She seemed abashed, perhaps she knew that she had jumped up too soon and maybe she should have kissed his cheek rather than her hand. The air isn't as sensitive a receiver as skin.

He clutched his satchel, scuffed in a similar way to his shoes both of which he seemed too fond of to replace. His shirt was creased, but then so were her jeans - no one irons anymore. He sat for two more stops, his expression transfixed somewhere between the evening's events and the blurring black hole of a backdrop that lies outside the window of the carriage.

He rubbed his hands together feverishly, perhaps they had been clammy from holding hers all evening as they strolled along the Strand. A cliched date idea but it appeared this had been their first, and aren't we all allowed to indulge cliche when it's the first of anything? Finally he rubbed his hands along his jeans and stood up. Straightening his satchel, his shoulders dropped and his smile fell away as he followed single file out through the sliding doors.