My hunger, which had disappeared overnight, is all I can think of now. When I was a teenager, I could go several days without eating—until I felt completely and wholly detached from the pig, its blood no longer in my veins, and my veins so empty that, with nothing going to my larynx, I couldn’t even speak—and, then, when it came to having my first meal again after however long, even when food was placed in front of me, I would eat reluctantly and only very gradually become aware again that I had veins and a stomach that needed feeding. I suppose this is something that’s changed in adulthood. Now, not eating for a long period of time is like a test of endurance—the urge to eat, when I see food, is overwhelming.

Very quickly, now, I’ve been taken over by panic—panic about my food being undelivered; my food being back at the sorting office and me not being allowed to collect it until a certain time when it’ll be processed tomorrow; my food still with the delivery driver, just being driven aimlessly around London; it being taken back to wherever it came from; and me having to live the next few days in an unplanned hunger that would eventuate in an unplanned silence which will inevitably arrive at the most inopportune moment, when perhaps someone at the Otter decides to talk to me, when perhaps I get an opportunity to speak to Gideon again, when perhaps I try to apologize for how we met, and for not recognizing him. I crouch down in front of the cubbyhole but, as I’d suspected, there’s no package; there’s nothing. I feel around with my hands on the two shelves inside anyway, but all there is are just a few dried rose leaves from, I guess, when someone in the building was sent some flowers.

I get up. I steady myself against the wall. I open my emails again.

The second email tells me to log in to my account to see where exactly my package has been left. I open my browser and search for FedEx. I click on “log in” on their homepage. But, when I put my email address in and my usual password that I use for literally everything, the page comes back to me with “We didn’t recognize that email address. Set up an account here.”

“Fuck!” I say. “Fucking fuck.”

“You all right there, Lyd?” a voice says. It’s Ben, pushing a bike along and approaching the front door of the studio. He’s wearing a waterproof coat over his clothes.

“What?” I say. I look him up and down. “It’s not raining, why the fuck are you . . . ?” I feel weirdly angry. I gesture up and down at his person.