His eyebrows sit neatly between the boundaries set for them. They are so striking in their symmetry that at first you don’t see the way his left eyebrow arches slightly higher than his right. How it lifts even higher as he enquires as to your health. How his lips disappear into his mouth as he considers your response.

The coarseness of his facial hair is incongruous with its spareness. You’d like to ask where they went or if they were never there int he first place. But you don’t. The probing questions are only asked in one direction.

You see now that one wiry black hair has escaped the safe confines of his nostril. Now you’ve seen it, it’s hard to look away. You wonder, does he have a routine for those, or a ‘wait and see’ approach?