One things Jack enjoys about the Indergrunde, he thinks, is its sense of fashion. Above, hippies and go go girls are all rage but here. Oh here. It's like time has gone backwards. Men in top hats clutching pocket watches and women with tightly coiffed hair and bustles. Not a bare midriff nor painted-on bikini's in sight. Oh the propriety. Jack could live with this, putting on a neat waistcoat every morning and tucking the watch Ali had given him into it's neatly made pocket. Buffing his shoes every night so they would wink in the sun each morning. Combing his hair. Here he would not be mocked for his neatness, but applauded for it, admired. Wanted. He loved it. He was very surprised to find that Anouk, of all people, felt the same. The child who had preferred bare foot to leather and jeans to dresses. Stuff that would last, that could take a good bashing. It was so odd when he saw her again. After so long, so many years. Odd, to see her in a skirt, a long one like the other young women in Indergrunde, in a cloak like them. Almost normal. Though of course she could never be. It was good to see though, that when they spoke later at the lake, that the feet beneath her long skirt, were bare.
I found some old pictures of women dancing in long skirts and I could totally see Anouk doing the same, just to see the skirt bell and swirl. Older Anouk of course and all mine