Heathrow Arrivals resolves itself back around you. There is an artist whose work you saw once in a Whitechapel gallery: she had stitched to a globe of the world metallic threads representing one single day’s flights, then somehow dissolved the globe, leaving just the sugar-spun mass of threads, and you think of it now, of how it made you think, 132how fine the threads that connect us from one person, or place, to another, and how precious, and how strong.

I have to go, you say, because if you stay for a moment longer, you won’t; or won’t be able to.

What are you going to do now? he says.

Now this minute now, or now in a more existential sense? you say, and somehow you manage to say it lightly.

He looks at you, then takes up your cue. Somewhere between the two?

We’re going to watch Hey Duggee on the train, for as long as the battery lasts. We’re going to be home by ten. We’re going to press all the buttons in the lift. We’re going to do the shopping and maybe bake a cake, which will really be a pretext for cracking lots of eggs and bashing the shells up with a teaspoon.

He laughs. You realise you love that laugh. You love that you’ve made him laugh. For a moment, nothing else matters.

Ok then, he says, softly, and you hear or maybe feel him take a breath, and let it slowly out. Take it easy.

Take it easy, you say back.

Ok, he says. Goodbye.

Goodbye, you say.

You do let Tilly press all of the buttons in the lift, all seven of them, from LG for the car park to the floors beyond your flat. You don’t sigh when the slow doors judder open and closed, open and closed. You just feel numb. You do bake the cake. You let Tilly crack the whole carton of eggs, 133far more than you need, and you think it’s ok, you’ll make an omelette later. You tell her the joke about Hamlet and egos that your cousin, at thirteen, had to explain to you; and you turn away before she can see that your laughter at how clever you thought it is turning to sobs.

From your little balcony, the September sky is high and cloudless.

You could email him, you think. You didn’t swap addresses, but you could google his name, his company. You won’t, but you could.

You call up a Google tab on your phone.

You won’t. You don’t.