I open Facebook and scroll through my feed. There’s a baby smashing a cake, a new car, a wedding, an injured pigeon around the back of the Morrisons in Margate, a cat on a sofa, lying on its back. I type Ben’s name into the search bar, with the surname I find on the piece of paper he left behind. His profile is private, but I can look at his profile pictures. I start with the oldest, in which he is in his school uniform—a blue and yellow tie deliberately loosened and messy, and a blue blazer; he’s got long, floppy hair and a plump, childish face; there are signatures and messages all over his shirt, so it must be the last day of school. I go through all the others, one by one, watching him steadily grow and change, his face getting slightly thinner and more defined, ending with a photo tagged with the location, Tempelhof in Berlin, in which he is holding a round steamed bun in front of his face so it covers it entirely. Next, I look at the profiles of random people from school I never really knew but who are friends on Facebook, getting married, having reunions, eating out together, and then the guy I shared a studio with at uni who’s in Taiwan now, and who, in his profile picture, is in front of a shop with signs advertising pineapple cake in the windows. Everything seems food related. I open my emails absentmindedly. When my in-box updates, I see that I have two emails from FedEx. “We have delivered your package,” one of them says. I sit up. It’s my dried pig blood. My stomach, as though it knows, growls. The other email reads: “Your package is in your designated safe place.”

The puppet falls to the floor with a clunk. I didn’t designate a safe place.

I stand up, suddenly aware of the extreme emptiness of my stomach, and I grab my keys, put on my shoes, and leave my studio.

The woman I saw the other day with a bike helmet hanging from her arm is outside her studio in the corridor.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “Sorry, I—” I point to the front door. I drop the keys as I step outside into the bright sunlight.