Steffi sighed. Why would you be here a year, two years, and not make an effort to learn the language. It made her look bad by association; it gave fuel to all these people, more of them every week, who said things like ‘Britain is full’. The people who had said to her Czech friend, the dish-washer, who’d been here nineteen years and had two kids with an English boyfriend: ‘You must be going home soon.’

‘The boss said James did something wrong. James said, no, I didn’t. But the guy didn’t believe him.’

‘Well, why don’t you call him,’ said Emil, as the bar-woman thumped down the beers in front of them. ‘You know his name?’

She didn’t, but there was something James used to say: what was it? When people called him directly for a ride. He used to say the name. ‘Hello …’ and then the name of the company. What was it?

‘Anything else?’ asked the barwoman.

Steffi refocused on the present. ‘That’s all, thanks. I like your hair.’

‘It’s for Keith Flint,’ said the server, and Steffi remembered the dance music guy who’d died that week – it popped up several times on her Twitter feed – and then by some sideways mental skip she remembered the word James used to say. ‘Cruiz!’

‘Cruise?’

‘With a z. I think that’s the name. He used to say, “Hello, Cruiz”.’

‘You want to call them? You want my phone, battery more?’

They moved to let someone else get to the bar. There was the usual odd sensation attached to handling someone else’s iPhone, a stranger’s, knowing how much of their life was inside it. But then it was still weird to be holding a phone to her ear at all. To be calling someone. She might as well be in Friends here.

Emil watched her face: tense, focused. She reminded him a bit of an animal. Her features were a little like a … squirrel, maybe? Alert, intent. A smallish face. She looked like she could dart into the trees any time. He probably wouldn’t use the squirrel comparison out loud.

‘Hello, no, I don’t have a destination,’ said Steffi. He saw her jaw clench. ‘No, I don’t have a reference number. Listen to me.’ She would be a bad person to annoy, Emil thought; she had steel. Although he never really wanted to annoy anyone, of course not. It just seemed to go that way a lot.

‘I need to speak to whoever is in charge,’ Steffi demanded. She made a gesture and Emil handed her the pint. She sipped it and shook her head.