He sighed, and she could hear another voice, muffled, in the room he was sitting in – someone on another desk, perhaps, working at another lab bench. She realised she had no idea what he was doing. Was he still at FullLife?

‘If today’s no good …’

‘No. Yes,’ she said, finally gathering her thoughts and grabbing a pen. ‘Today’s fine. Yes, of course. Lunch. Where?’

On the train, Eva had a row of seats to herself. Over beyond the doors she could see another passenger, a young man in a suit with bright yellow earphones. She could hear the thumping bass of his music above the smooth glide of the train on the tracks. Her eyes stared out of the window but didn’t focus on the fields they were passing – beyond them, in the distance and half hidden by trees, she could see the large complex of care homes on the outskirts of the city.

There was a paper at the end of each aisle, as there always was, even though everyone got their news online. But reading material, recycled of course, was supplied on public transport, to make the carriages feel homely, welcoming. Newspaper was the wrong word for it though, she thought as she picked one up. This was a brochure. A series of glossy adverts. Nothing more. She wished they’d leave the trains out of their bloody PR campaigns. Trains were one of the few places she still loved.

She’d once travelled by train across Siberia, with Piotr. The last time she’d left the country, in fact. How long ago was that? She counted back the years, trying not to use landmarks of funerals and hospital appointments to keep track of the dates. Ten years. Could it really be ten years? Even then the visas had been hard to get. Piotr’s credentials got them into Russia – officially he was writing an article about the new canals, unofficially a report on the black market for used pouches. Eva was allowed to go along for the ride. Everyone assumed she was his wife. Still, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity, even if she was infuriated by the way it came about – FullLife were funding the website that had commissioned his report. But the world needed to know how much damage the pouches were doing, and she could write her own articles when she got home regardless of what Piotr decided to publish.