‘Yeah, well, I like you,’ said Steffi, ‘but first of all, why are there seventy-two pictures of your dick in a folder? I know I shouldn’t have looked in your phone, by the way, but also, see, that makes me think you and me wouldn’t be that much of a special thing.’

Emil tried to muster indignation at the intrusion, at the sheer rudeness of it, but he could only feel shame. In the blood-rush to his cheeks, he found himself wanting to rip off his clothes, but no longer in a sexy way; he wanted to rip off his whole skin.

‘I chatted with a guy and things went good, and—’

‘A guy?’

‘Yeah. They’re his – it’s his dick, not me,’ said Emil, scraping back in his chair and moving away from the table. ‘Anyways, please – do you want another coffee, or should I go, or …’

‘So you’re bi?’

‘I’m, I don’t know what.’ He stopped. She was motioning him back to the table. ‘I was lonely, it’s lonely here, so I try to find people.’

She took his hand. He stood by the table. She glanced at the screen, and then back to him.

‘I guess the thing is,’ said Steffi, ‘kissing because it’s been a long, crazy night, that’s not how to stop being lonely. Being friends, that’s how to do it.’

Emil nodded slowly. Steffi wasn’t sure whether he had understood, and if so whether she had hurt him. But it was true. And she knew how he felt, because she had felt it, too, these past couple of years as a meaningless cog in a city of distant, automated machineries. She hadn’t felt it the way James obviously had. She hadn’t been ‘lonely’ in an active way. She would never have described herself that way. She wouldn’t have described herself as anything, exactly. She’d just been living, getting up each day, assuming at some point a signpost would point her towards something of substance. And all this time, there were people out there who desperately needed the help of someone like her. You defined yourself by participating in other people’s lives.

All these things, half-formed, were building in her brain, and she looked sadly and sympathetically at Emil, who (she now realized) hadn’t wanted much more out of this past eight hours than one thing. But one thing she wasn’t going to give him. She wouldn’t be able to say any of this to him in English. Maybe one day he’d feel it for himself.