After about twenty minutes a tram came, and Matt and Rona eventually got back to Matt's house. The bulb for the outside light had blown; in the dark Matt fumbled around first for his key-ring, and then once he'd found it for the front-door key. While Rona shivered he tried and failed several times to fit the key into the lock. "I haven't had that much to drink, honest" he laughed.

"Is the central heating on inside?" asked Rona.

"Should be."

Rona consoled herself with that thought while she tried to hug herself warm; finally she heard the rasp and click of the key sliding into the lock and coaxing the door open; Matt turned and grinned triumphantly, barely visible in the darkness, and he pushed the door open.
It was warm inside; stuffy too, but Rona didn't mind that. While Matt switched on the hallway light Rona made a bee-line for the nearest heating-vent, the position of which she'd memorised over the last few cold months of their relationship, and stood above it, her hands splayed, her shoulders hunched.

Matt came up behind her, and hugged her, and kissed her on the side of her neck, and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head. The stubble on his face rubbed roughly against the suede-like texture of Rona's short hair.

"You know, Hannah thought we'd broken up" Rona said.

"What?"

"When I said I hadn't seen you in a while."

"Oh, right. Well I can see how that'd make sense."

"What?" Rona wrenched away from his embrace and turned to face him, horror-struck.

Matt shut his eyes and shook his head, and tried to hug her to him again. "To her, I mean. I mean I can see how it might seem to her like we would be broken up."

"Oh." Rona stood a little stiffly in his hug. "But we're not going to, are we?" she asked suddenly, fearfully.

"Honey, what are you talking about? No. Of course not! I mean - I don't want to break up with you." He stopped hugging her, and turned her around to face him once again. "Are you seriously worried about that?"

"Well - we haven't seen each other in a while . . ."

"But neither of us wants to be one of those couples, do we? The kind that spends all their time together?"

"I guess not . . ."

"Anyway, I didn't want to be pestering you all the time." And after she'd quit the Word on the Street, he hadn't wanted to become her main way of spending time, and thus provide her with an excuse not to look for a job. It didn't seem to have worked.

"Okay" said Rona, speaking more softly than he'd ever heard her speak before.

He sighed, and pressed his forehead against her. "Listen, Rona, I'm not going to break up with you, okay?" And then he kissed her, gently, on the lips, before she could answer.