The two people at the stall were a guy and a girl who, it soon became clear, were a couple. I don’t recall the guy very clearly. He was bearded, a few years older than me, maybe in his mid 20s. She was younger, closer to my age. She was very slender, with narrow boyish hips and [I later learned] small pert breasts. She had an immense wild mane of black curly hair falling half-way down her back, bright blue eyes, and very pale skin. She wore a great deal of black eyeliner which of course enhanced her eyes, but no other makeup that I could see. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but she had sharp, pointed, delicate features which gave her an appealing urchin/waif look, what the French call ‘gamine’. So I’ll call her the Gamine Girl, because, though I knew her name at the time and remembered it for years after, I find I can’t recall it now.

As I passed their stall she called out to me, asking, I guess, if I would like to support their cause. I wouldn’t have stopped otherwise – such things didn’t interest me in those days – but she’d caught my attention so I stopped and we started chatting. On closer inspection she looked distinctly scruffy. She was dressed in rather grubby jeans that hung loosely on her slender frame, and a loose jumper of some sort, over which she wore an old, stained, grey gabardine overcoat, which looked like a bit of old school uniform.

But as we talked – about what? I can’t recall – I became a little intrigued by her. I suppose, in view of what happened, she was flirting with me, but I was too naïve to realize. Her boyfriend kept his distance. I felt he was keeping a close eye on her and me, but didn’t seem to mind us chatting away.

Then, a day or two later – maybe even the very next day – I ran into the Gamine Girl again in the Union foyer. It was around mid-morning. She was on her own this time. I got the impression that she was just passing through on her way somewhere, and when she saw me she kind of bounded up to me rather enthusiastically. She had on the same scruffy clothes as she’d worn the first time we’d met. We stood and chatted for a little while in the middle of the foyer. I’m not sure how it arose, or maybe I’d mentioned it when we’d first met, but she learned that I was living in one of the residential colleges. My college was just a few hundred yards from the Union, and as we chatted she asked whether she could have a look at my room. I didn’t read anything into this – I thought she was just curious to see how the accommodation looked. In fact I think that’s what she told me – she said she’d never seen a residential college room.