The bus slowed along the main street of the town: gold rush era buildings crowded close to each other, as though proximity might protect them from the great wide expanse of landscape all around them. It was pretty, but after the street I’d just seen in the pictures of Germany I felt reluctantly inclined to agree with Hessel: that it was a poor copy of all things European.

I stepped down onto the street with the others, and the driver gave me a cheery wave as he drove the empty bus away, leaving a view of the stately post office across the road.

There it was. And this was it.

Inside the building there was no queue and I walked straight up to the counter.

‘Yes, love,’ said a man appearing at the desk through the doorway behind.

‘I’m picking up a package for Anna Krause,’ I said.

‘Have you got your mailbox slip there?’

‘My slip? No, it’s a direct to post office delivery.’

‘Your code then – you would have been messaged a receipt code when it came in. On your phone there?’

I frowned, and looked at the face of my phone. ‘Um, no,’ I said, as I uselessly scrolled through my emails and messages for something I knew wasn’t there. ‘But it should have been here today.’

‘No “shoulda” when it comes to packages, love. But I’ll have a look. Krause was it?’

I nodded and the man disappeared back through the door. More people queued behind me. Eventually he reappeared, empty-handed.

‘Sorry love. Not today. You gotta wait for the notification.’

‘But –’

The man looked past me and addressed the next person in line. ‘What can we do y’ for?’ he said. Dismissed, I turned and walked out onto the street again.

Cars went up and down the road, everyone on their way to somewhere else. I had hours until the next bus back. No studying here. Such a waste of precious time. I suddenly felt like an alien – what was I doing here? And I felt like crying, too: crying for my sick Opa, crying for not being there with him, crying for Nassim, crying for being pregnant and for my wasted day.

No. A minor setback, that’s all this was. A minor setback.

A sandwich board was propped on the pavement ahead. A two-dollar shop. I would use some time getting supplies. Inside, I immediately found a power board and an extension lead, a packet of six mouse traps, and also an electric kettle and a little aluminium teapot. And then I picked up a cool-bag and freezer block so I could keep milk over at Bromley. I shouldn’t have been spending my money like that, but the thought that I could study with beverages actually cheered me a little. From the next aisle I could hear a woman’s voice in discussion with a young man.

‘Well, is there even any point getting these now?’

‘Yeah. Totally. I so reckon he’ll just turn up, Ma.’