The top part of the choclo—the slightly sweet, pudding-y corn layer—had caramelised around the edges the way Anita hoped it would and the bottom layer of beef, onions, olives and spices was as juicy with flavour as it should be.

‘This dish is kind of a Chilean cottage pie. I realise it isn’t exactly sophisticated,’ Anita said.

‘Yummy is what it is,’ Rohan mumbled around a mouthful of food. ‘Thank you for introducing me to choclo—never heard of it before.’

‘I always think there’s something sort of infantile about this dish—the spongy top, the combo of salty and sweet, the whole lot soft enough to be shovelled into your mouth with a spoon.’

Rohan nodded. ‘That’s why it works as comfort food.’

All evening, she could feel thoughts about Stacey sitting on the edge of her mind, even while she was enjoying the food, the wine, the talking with this man, the laughing. Those good things felt real—they were real—but strangely disconnected from the other reality which was always there, like an indigestible lump in her belly.

Anita and Rohan kept excavating their way to the bottom of the terracotta dish and talked about their mothers force-feeding them in times of stress. Rohan described his experience as a fat teenager, the weight piling on from his mother’s feeding plus his own secret eating to console himself about being a pudgy, unconfident loser. In the end, it was his desire to join the police force that gave him the drive to lose weight and cultivate some muscles.

Anita had developed a theory about men like Rohan. If you encountered an attractive grown-up man who was not an up-himself dickhead, it often emerged that the guy had been considered deeply unattractive as a seventeen-year-old. Those adolescent males who were chubby, the late developers, those blighted by acne or whatever—they were the best value as adults. They didn’t carry the unconscious arrogance of the good-looking man and they maintained a sympathetic understanding of insecurity in other people. Now it turned out Rohan Mehta was one of those cases. That explained his slight diffidence about himself, despite his undeniably handsome looks. Maybe it also helped to explain his kindness and the cautious, humble manner. Anita decided not to share her theory with Rohan right now. She didn’t want to embarrass him or give the impression she was sucking up, coming on to him in a desperate way.

They opened a second bottle of wine, with a verbal contract to drink only half of it, and Anita filled a platter with sweet biscuits that had been posted from Chile.

Taking dishes to the sink, she was aware of their bodies close together in the small kitchen space. When Rohan reached behind her to put something down, she leaned against his arm, leaning firmly enough that it would be clear it was a purposeful lean rather than an accidental brushing past.