Picos Gemeos

‘It’s wet,’ a young woman warned my lover and I just as we reached the tube train’s only free seat. ‘Pass it along if I leave before you.’

At the next stop, a grandmother with her 4-year-old grandchild went for the soggy seat. I stopped them. She apologised profusely in Mandarin while the child translated my warning.

‘I nearly brought sticky notes,’ I told my lover while I rummaged through my backpack for paper. He fished a black marker pen out of his, a torn journal page and voilà: someone’s trousers were saved.