He stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Steffi had not moved an inch, as far as he could see. The computer’s cold blue light was on her face and her spine was very straight, like in the Alexander Technique leaflet they had in the staff room at La Chimère, as if Emil had the time or money to pay someone to teach him how to sit down, for Jesus’s sake. He cleared his throat. Come on, just ask her.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’ Her eyes didn’t leave the screen.

‘I was wondering …’ he began.

‘Sorry, did you turn the shower dial right to the end?’

‘Shower dial.’

‘Yes, the …’ Still without looking at him, she mimed it. ‘The thing that makes the water come out. Did you turn it real tight? When you were done.’

‘I think so.’ Emil felt his rush of mirror-confidence ebbing already. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘It’s just, it has this thing where it sputters out at weird moments,’ said Steffi.

The moment was slipping away. He moved over to where she was, peered over her at the screen, a picnic of thumbs-ups, praying hands, hearts.

‘Lots of people seem to love this guy that they don’t want him to die,’ said Emil.

Steffi nodded.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Emil, ‘why if he has all these friends, why you would, why is the reason he …?’

Steffi shrugged, looking cross. ‘Because people – it’s complicated.’

Emil was aggrieved to find he was feeling jealous, again. Of this online team with their little nocturnal project, with their sense of shared goal. The buzzing chat thread, mutual back-slaps. And … he couldn’t really be jealous of the guy himself, could he? Just, the guy was occupying more of Steffi’s thoughts than Emil was managing fully alive.

He slid his chair in next to her. ‘You’re doing such a good work,’ he said. ‘You’re a hero.’

‘Shut up,’ she said, biting her lip.

‘Shut up like, you are happy?’ Emil persisted. ‘Or like, it is really shut up and not jokes?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Steffi, eyes not moving from the screen. The thing was, being a hero was no longer the point, had nothing to do with anything. This was not something she could walk away from with a degree of credit, if it went wrong. This had turned out to be kind of a game after all, in the most brutal sense: she was either going to win or lose. And if she lost, she’d lost a guy’s life.