Even when he has finished, he still stands there holding the spoon and bowl. It begins to unnerve me a bit. It’s almost like he’s staring at me – but he is gazing vacantly down his own garden, looking right through me, of course. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears … I think of all the times people stare at their own reflections in the windows of trains and buses and I think, what if there was someone on the other side of the glass, mirroring your own face with theirs? What if, as you gazed at yourself, someone else was gazing at you? For the whole while you thought you were just staring at yourself and letting your face be so open and honest, all that time, someone else was looking into your thoughts? Close up, Andrew’s gaze is vacant-seeming. I wonder if he is thinking about his conversation with Ruth but his expression betrays no hint of distress. He is drifting – and all the while, I am close enough to see the tiny tributaries of veins on his eyeballs.

It’s peaceful, hallucinatory, watching someone who looks as if he is watching back but isn’t. It makes me feel less lonely. I don’t want him to turn away and he doesn’t seem to want to either. Andrew … I try his real name. Yes, it will do. Andrew. I begin to think of how much we could have in common. I would take things slowly, with this one. We would have long conversations in the pub where he would tell me all about his relationship with the bag of spanners and I would nod and listen sympathetically, and even demonstrate a little faux female solidarity, putting things from her point of view for his consideration. He would think what a nice person I was, how balanced and reasonable. We would meet like that over a period of several weeks and all this time, I would not make a move on him, not so much as a lingering look or a hand on the knee. I would bide my time. Eventually, it would be him who would make the first clumsy pass, when we were back at his place having a cup of tea, and as we tumbled towards his blank, plain bedroom, he would be at first surprised, then excited, by my hunger. He would only realise the full power of it as I was on top of him, unbuttoning his shirt to see his flat white chest, pausing halfway to bend and lick the salt from his collarbone.