Friday morning, the garden.

The city has been making a different sound since yesterday. Or he has been listening differently. He doesn’t know which.

He starts with the compost. The left bin is nearly ready — he checked it two weeks ago and left it. Now he opens the hatch and looks in: dark, dense, warm in a way that has nothing to do with the season. He turns the top layer with a fork. The smell is good. By the end of April he can work some of this into the beds.

He moves to the brassicas. Three plants need attention — not much, a few yellowed leaves at the base, the usual. He works along the rows methodically, pinching and checking and turning leaves over.

He is halfway through the second row when he stops.

He is not tired. He is not looking at anything in particular — a leaf, the gravel, the far wall. He is simply there, fork at his side, for a few seconds. Then something settles and he continues.

He has been doing this for a while. He has never kept count.

The sweet peas have grown again overnight.

He notices this at the south bed, when he goes to check the jute. Not by much — a centimetre, perhaps two — but there is a new tendril reaching from the main stem, moving slowly in the direction of the second string. It has not found it yet. He crouches and watches it for a longer moment than he planned. The movement is not visible if you look directly at it. You have to look away.

He goes to the bench and sits. The coffee is going cold in the cup beside him. He drinks some. The signal gantry is a dark shape in the east light.

Mara had come yesterday evening. He had been at the brassica rows and heard the gate. She said: I sent it. He said: good. She walked to the south bed and asked about the tendrils. He told her the word: circumnutation. She had gone.

He had worked until the light was gone.

He thinks now: she has done the thing. It is done. What comes next is not in the garden. He is in the garden. He will stay here until he is not.

He takes his notebook from his jacket pocket and writes three lines — the compost status, the brassica count, which plants need checking again by the weekend — and closes it. His handwriting in the morning is always smaller than he intends. He has never corrected for this.

He sets down the cup and goes back to the rows.

The morning is its own thing. He lets it be.