On my way to the tube, I stop in one of the shops in the main station that sells organic food and coffee. They have fairly low lighting, which is nice, compared to the harsh white strip lights on the concourse. There are heaters glowing orange inside too, and when I stand close to them, my skin warms up. It doesn’t retain the heat—it’s more like how leather can be warmed up next to a heater but, once it’s taken away from the heat source, it’ll quite quickly cool down again—but it does feel good to imagine for a moment that I have body heat. In the refrigerated-food section, I pick up a few items, like another customer does next to me, and turn them over to read the nutritional information. I like reading the various numbers that tell me how what I am holding will transform inside a human’s body. Energy: 326 cal, Fat: 16g, Carbohydrates: 38g; Protein: 11g. This meal has grains and pomegranate seeds, spring onion, olive oil, mustard seeds, garlic, and lemon. It is called a “Superfood, Super-Clean Salad.” I turn over a pot of yogurt and oats too, and read the information on the small white label, and then put it back on the shelf like something in it is inadequate, or it doesn’t have what I’m looking for inside it. I watch as the other customer picks up a boiled egg sitting on a bed of spinach in a small, round, plastic tub and an iced coffee. He takes his food to the counter and pays for it and, soon, another person is next to me in the refrigerated-foods section, picking up items and putting them down too. Eventually, I go to the counter and ask if they sell any black pudding, or whether they know what shops nearby might sell any, and the woman working there bewilderedly shakes her head. “Sorry, no. Black pudding?”

“Yeah,” I say, regretting having not asked for some at the butcher’s, where there’d been whole black pudding sausages on display in among all the other processed meats. “It comes in a sausage.”

She shakes her head again. “Marks & Spencer, maybe?”

As I leave, I see the man who bought the egg. He is sitting in the café area under a heater. He has bitten off the top of the boiled egg and is holding the rest in his hand. I go to another shop to see if I can find a sleeping bag or something else soft to sleep on tonight, but everything is too expensive. I think about going to M&S but I can’t handle the thought of interacting with more people and being disappointed again, so I go down to the tube station.