He stared out the window at the grey Sydney day. “Well, I guess soups are vegetable or meat based, like the broth part. Whereas cereal is dairy based, like the broth, er… liquid part.”

“So what does that make cream of mushroom soup?”

“Gross, that’s what that is.”

“Or cream of chicken soup? It’s dairy.”

“It’s savoury,” Michael said. “With meat. Cereal isn’t and doesn’t have meat in it.”

“Not all soup is savoury. And not all cereal is sweet.”

“That’s true.”

“Jordan asked me this yesterday, and it’s ridiculous but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Michael stared at me for a long second, then opened my office door and called out to his personal assistant. “Hey, Rach. Why isn’t cereal called or considered to be a soup?”

There was a pause, then her voice sounded down the hall. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” Michael replied.

“Like milk soup and Weet-Bix croutons?”

“See?” I said. “It’s an unanswerable question.”

“Not sure about unanswerable,” Rachel offered, appearing at my door. “More like, random and not altogether too important.”

That made me laugh. “True. But interesting.”

Michael sighed. “He’s playing a game of Q&A with his new love interest on the bus every afternoon and it seems to be a contest of who can ask the weirdest question.”

“Oooh, that’s so cute!” Rachel said, her face lighting up. “Ask him why we send something by car and call it shipment but send stuff by ship and call it cargo? Or why do our feet smell and our noses run? Or why the number eleven isn’t pronounced onety-one? Is Disneyland a people trap operated by a mouse?” She nodded. “I can keep going.”

Michael squinted at her. “Did you take a class on random questions?”

“Kind of. I took philosophy at university and we used to have these drinking games where—” She composed herself. “You know what, never mind.”

I laughed. “I’ll keep those questions in mind.”

But as the afternoon wore on, rain settled in and the bus was crowded. I couldn’t save him a seat, and that was not part of my plan at all.

He climbed on the bus and I watched as he scanned through the crowd and he spotted me and smiled, but I could see he was disappointed when he saw there was an older gent sitting next to me. He held onto the vertical handrail near the step and gave me a pouty frown.

“Sorry,” I mouthed.