I remember our first cigarettes together were Rothmans, middle tar, with a filter, of course. It was ten o’clock on a Saturday night and we were attending a local church’s youth club disco. I recall that she’d gone outside for a breath of air.

God, I could do with a gasper, she’d said, avoiding my gaze, as if we were on stage and I’d forgotten my lines while searching for a prop.

I groped around inside my jacket for my pack of Rothmans. My awkward fumbling attracted her attention, and she smiled as I raised my head. She moved closer and caught my eye as I flipped the lid to reveal a double row of cigarettes, lined up like coffin nails wrapped in silver paper.

Do you have the convenience of a light? She’d asked, helping herself.

No, I don’t, I said, clenching a cigarette between my lips, and turning my pockets inside out to show my lack of a handy incendiary.

Typical, she said, rolling her eyes and leaning towards me.

My jaw all but fell open as she raised her slender hand toward my face.

Never mind, she said, I’ll improvise. Her out-stretched thumb and forefinger plucked the smouldering cigarette from my dry lips. The manoeuvre was gentle but precise and practiced, as if she was removing a milk tooth from under a sleeping infant’s pillow. Her studied gesture was one of ritual, full of expectation, belief and mystery. She was both a nocturnal light-fingered fairy with a delicate touch, and a kind spirit exchanging a child’s fang for a silver sixpence. My cigarette, now resting between my lips again, took on an unearthly quality, blessed by her soft caress. I watched her drawing the smoke into her lungs. The world stopped spinning, and I felt dizzy, waiting for her to exhale.

I needed that; she said, allowing the white plume to drift over her shoulder.

I’m Virginia, by the way.

I returned her smile as my face blanched, the smoke having gone down the wrong way.

Don’t forget to breathe out, she said, grinning, or you’ll die coughing.

At that moment, I was hooked.