The first thing I noticed about him was his socks. That was pretty unusual for me. No, wait, that was unprecedented. Usually I’ll notice a well-sculpted face, a long pair of legs, or a pert arse first (not necessarily in that order). I honestly couldn’t say I’d ever noticed a man’s socks before the rest of him. They were the brightest things in the whole train carriage, a whirling pattern of lime and magenta that made my eyeballs itch. I could only see them because he had one pinstriped leg crossed over the other, hitching the fabric up enough to reveal a few startling inches between the tops of his shiny brogues and the hem of his trousers. I tracked the stripes up his legs to the sheaf of paperwork in his lap, the neatly buttoned jacket, the Windsor knot at his throat, up farther to a face that was nondescript in every way. They weren’t the kind of features I’d be interested in sketching: pursed lips, regular nose, grayish eyes. Dark hair tamed down with product, with just a few unruly curls defying the Brylcreem tyranny.
