“Are you okay?” Ben asks. His eyes are very wide. I can see all the tiny blood vessels that are normally covered by his eyelids.

“Yeah, I’m just . . .” I’m trying to type my password again in case I got it wrong and my phone slips from my hands and lands facedown on the ground. Ben bends down to pick it up and dusts the screen off and passes it back to me. Then, he puts one of his hands on my arm. It’s very, very warm, even through my top. It’s very steady. His grip is firm. I look up. And then I see him, momentarily, in all his different guises, his face changing in my mind like a flip book, from steamed bun back to the child in his school uniform, the knot of a tie under his chin, his cheeks fat, flushed and babyish.

“Has something happened?” Ben asks, in a very gentle voice.

“I, umm,” I say. I swallow. “I . . .” I take a deep breath. I can’t tell him that I’m just looking for a delivery that FedEx has said has arrived but that isn’t here and that they’ve said is supposedly in my selected safe place, but that I didn’t set up a safe place and can’t log in to my account to see where they mean because I don’t seem to have an account. I can’t tell him, either, that I’m exceptionally hungry, and that my only source of food is probably making its way to a sorting office or wherever it was sent from. Or that something in the air, him—his skin, his person—smells incredible. Sweet, tart, a hint of umami. “It’s . . . it’s the anniversary of my mum’s . . . death. Basically,” I hear myself say.

“Oh shit,” Ben says.

What the fuck, a voice says in my head.

“Wow, I’m so sorry.” Ben gives my arm a squeeze.

I don’t say anything.

“Actually, my, er . . . my mum’s sick,” Ben says.

“Oh god. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah . . . She’s been sick for a while. Yeah.” I feel awful.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Ben looks at a random spot on the factory wall, takes his hand off my arm, and lets it hang loosely at his side. His coat has a tear in it just above the left pocket and there’s mud all up his side. I look back up into his face. “Yeah, basically cancer. Yeah.” Through the smell of the mud, I recognize a hint of nice, sharp iron.

“God, I’m so sorry,” I say. I watch him.

He shrugs. He looks back into my eyes. “It’s okay. I mean, you know. It’s just part of life, isn’t it?”