“So, I got kind of obsessed with timekeeping devices. But ones that aren’t always completely accurate, or ones that are accurate but maybe change depending on where you are, you know? Sundials and things like that.” We reach the end of the bridge. “And we had to move Mum out of her house, into a smaller one closer to the hospital, so I was sorting through her stuff and I started making clocks with things from her life, you know, casting shadows with them.”

I feel a bit guilty. I’d assumed that his work would be much less personal and sensitive, that it’d be something mediocre and not to my taste. Before this point, he hadn’t really come across as intelligent at all.

“Now, though, I’m making a flower clock.” He nods to himself.

“A flower clock?”

“Yeah. Mum was . . . is a florist, so I’m using her books on flowers to try to re-create or, well, create Carl Linnaeus’s flower clock. He was a guy from the eighteenth century. Basically, each flower in the clock opens at a different time of day.”

“Its petals open?”

“Yeah, so flowers have circadian rhythms,” Ben says. He’s blushing. “I don’t know. Sounds kind of stupid now I’m saying it. And it hasn’t actually worked yet either. I thought, though, that with climate change and everything, the flowers will start opening at weird times, so it kind of goes beyond everything with, you know . . . my mum. It’ll be, like, the more we damage the world, the more we damage the clock, and time, and, yeah, the future.”

“That sounds beautiful, Ben,” I say.

“Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, what am I going to do with it? What’s the point of it, really? Will it go in a gallery and then be, like, sold as prints of photographs of it or something? And then the time element of it will be gone.”

“Hmm.”

“Sorry,” Ben says, and he shakes his head. “I guess I’m in a bit of a crap mood.” He looks at me sideways, and nervously laughs to himself. “I mean, I don’t know why I just told you all that.”

I shake my head. “It’s fine. So, what flower’s time is it now?” I ask.

Ben looks at his phone. “Ugh, yeah, so that’s the other thing. There actually doesn’t seem to be a flower for each hour, which is kind of problematic. But the closest to now is the meadow goat’s beard. It opens at three.”

“Oh, cool,” I say. “So right now doesn’t exist in flower time?”

“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t. I’ve never thought about it like that.”