‘And how are those new substances going?’

He was studying a display showing one of the earliest robots from the sixteenth century. ‘You mean work? It’s OK.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘Not much to say.’

‘You don’t talk about it much.’

‘Just a bit boring, that’s all.’

‘Trust me, I’m interested.’

He stopped looking at the sixteenth-century mechanical monk and turned to her. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m interested in what you’re interested in.’

He smiled, pleased. ‘It’s going well. It’s good. We’re testing a new product.’

‘What does it do?’

‘Kills the cereal aphid in barley.’

‘Sounds impressive. Is it dangerous?’

‘Well, you wouldn’t want to put it on your cornflakes,’ he joked. ‘But no, of course it’s not dangerous.’

‘But isn’t that exactly what you’re expecting farmers to do? Spray it on our cornflakes?’

He frowned. ‘Well, not like that, no.’

‘You’re right. Ignore me, I’m being silly.’

He smiled at her, unsure.

‘Ethics improved?’ asked Becky, gently.

A flicker across his face. ‘You should forget about that. I was talking rubbish.’

‘You sure? Only, it didn’t sound like it at the time. It sounded like you were being put in a very difficult position.’

‘No, honestly . . .’

‘Are they asking you to do something you don’t agree with?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it—’

‘Something to do with one of their products? Something that isn’t strictly safe?’

‘I said, I don’t want to talk about it,’ he snapped, voice raised.

A silence. The people around them looked up, nudged each other – a tiff on Valentine’s Day! – then gradually lost interest and picked up their own conversations again.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,’ said Adam. ‘Hey, look!’

Becky turned to see another robot come into the room. This one was modern, eerily lifelike, white supple ‘skin’ covering its body from head to toe and, as Sally explained, eyes that moved in response to sounds, to people entering its peripheral vision as it rotated its head. It doesn’t have vision, thought Becky, it’s a robot, but it certainly looked as if it did when its head stopped at her and the dull grey-black of its pupils seemed to bore right into her. Then it turned away and walked up to another woman.

‘Do you want to dance?’ it said charmingly, its voice smooth and digitally pure.

The woman looked taken aback but was blushing – actually blushing, thought Becky.

‘Why don’t you say yes?’ said Sally. ‘Don’t hurt Charlie’s feelings!’

‘OK, yes!’ said the woman and Charlie held up his arms and she tentatively touched his hands and they started to move across the floor.

‘I like you,’ said Charlie. ‘Will you be my Valentine?’

Laughs from the crowd. The woman gazed up at Charlie as if it were a real person, flattered by the attention. ‘Um . . .’

‘She’s spoken for!’ called out a man. He moved closer, pretending to raise his fist in jealousy.

More laughs. It was mesmerizing, and Becky was struck by how humans could be moved by a sophisticated piece of robotics and yet be inured to the plight of real people. Half of us probably walked straight past at least one homeless person on the way in, she thought. It was easy to ignore the unfortunate if you weren’t directly affected. It was easy to forget, to walk on by. Her job was to redirect the public’s attention, tell the story, expose the story. I need to pursue this.