I saw her ankles first. She jumped onto the tube carriage in a hurry, grabbing the pole like a dancer, not a pole-dancer, but a ballerina, with poise. What caught my attention was the penny sized blisters that covered her ankles. A series of bites spiralled around her calfs, crawling towards her thighs like morse code. How high did they go? I dreaded to think. She reached down, scratched self-consciously at the largest of the bites. It screamed angrily, throbbing against the light mahogany tone of recently tanned skin. I quickly concluded that no more than twenty-four hours ago this woman had been sunning herself on a beach. Then train screamed into the station, and brought with it a judgement, an instant assessment formed from nothing more than a glance. She would claim these marks as the battle scars of a good time. “The holiday was great. The weather was beautiful. So hot. But the mosquitos. You’ve never seen anything like them. They ate me alive. Look. See. Ate me alive.” Â The tube doors opened. The woman pushed her way past the crowd of commuters, and disappeared, taking her war story with her.