“Flowers fascinate me,” the robot said, ignoring the question. “How humans use them as symbols. As a declaration of love, for instance. Or to signify mourning.”

“It would be nice if someone bought me flowers,” Mariam said. She thought of Nasir, who’d become a policeman, who she’d only just realised must have awkwardly tried to ask her out a month or two back, when she’d run into him. . . . She was so used to being on her own it never even crossed her mind he might have. . . .

Well, it didn’t matter, she thought. But still. There was something nice about the idea.

“Do you not have a person in your life?” the robot said kindly.

“My mother,” Mariam said, too quickly. “I must look after her.”

“I understand,” the robot said. “I think sometimes to be a robot is to be permanently old, while the world shifts around you. There have not been new robots in a long time, not of our kind. I think we were an idea that seemed shiny and new and exciting once, and then, just as quickly, people lost interest.”

“They always do,” Mariam said.

“Yes. Well, I would like a rose.”

“Which one?” Mariam said. She looked at the robot curiously. “Is it for pleasure only, or for a purpose? As you said, flowers are symbolic for us humans. Excuse me if I seem to pry. . . .”

The robot said, “It is quite all right. You are curious. Yes. I do not know for sure. It is interesting how the red rose can be both a declaration of love and a funeral flower.”

“Not really,” Mariam said. “You bring flowers to a funeral to show your love to those departed.”

“I would like a red rose,” the robot said. “Yes. I would like that. The flower of both love and grief.”

“And is it love or grief you want it for?” Mariam said.

The robot considered. “Perhaps both,” it said.

Mariam pulled one of the flowers out of a bunch. “How about this one?” she said. “It’s a Damask rose, and the red is light, but it has a beautiful fragrance.”

She wrapped it lightly. The robot brought out a strange old coin purse and rummaged inside. Mariam saw Mongol tögrög and Drift salt and Martian shekels and rubles. She felt bad.

“Here,” she said. “Take it. I am closing anyway.”

“You are kind,” the robot said. It took the flower. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Will you be going far? It will need water.”

“As far as the past,” the robot said. “And who can say how distant that is?”

Mariam nodded, and she thought the old robot might be a little damaged, for it made little sense to her.

“Here,” she said. She filled a small vial with water and put the tip of the stem of the rose into it and said, “So that it would keep a while longer.”