"Street lights, turn on one by one,

My hope is, descending like the sun.

Try to tell myself there's freedom in the loneliness."

It’s the following Tuesday, two in the morning, when Joohyun walks in through the door again. Seulgi’s so bored she never even notices the Lamborghini pull up outside and the lights cut off and the door open. She looks up from her magazine reading and sees her there and smiles without knowing she’s smiled at all. ‘Joohyun,’ she says.

‘Hey. You busy?’

‘Not really. Not at all, actually.’ She waves the magazine around as if to prove this point.

‘You wanna come for a drive?’

‘I can’t. Said that before. Sorry.’

‘Right,’ Joohyun says, a hint of disappointment in her tone. She stands there with her hands in her pockets, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot, looking around at nothing in the way people tend to when they have nothing better to do. As if trying to preoccupy herself. Seulgi offers up another smile. ‘Can I get you something?’ she says.

‘Just a pack of smokes.’

‘Same as before?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t actually need anything. I just wanted to come say hi. That’s not weird, is it?’

‘Not at all,’ Seulgi says. She takes a pack of the Marlboro Golds and puts them down on the counter and folds her magazine away. Joohyun leans against the desk again. She smells incredible, the same intoxicating hint of sandalwood and jasmine playing like an afternote between them. Looks about the same, hair neatly tied back, lips rouged, smiling at Seulgi, Seulgi smiling back. ‘Are you sure you can’t come for a drive?’ she asks, and Seulgi nods apologetically.

‘Not even for, like, half an hour?’

‘Who would watch this place?’

‘You said it was quiet. How many people have come in?’

‘A couple,’ Seulgi lies.

Joohyun pouts in response and it earns her another smile. Seulgi takes a moment to try to regain her composure. There’s a restlessness bubbling within her that is equal parts exciting and overwhelming. She stands there looking at Joohyun over the counter as if unsure of how to properly proceed. As if there could be some protocol for this sort of human interaction. So that eventually all she can manage is to ask meekly, ‘You fancy some ice cream?’

‘Not right now.’

In the silence following Seulgi looks about. The bit about the cameras is a carefully crafted lie, an excuse. The cameras haven’t worked for a month and it’s been an issue bothering her because Seungwan says they need fixing and Seungwan is right, it’s a security risk. But it also means Seungwan can’t check up on her. Not that she would anyway. She thinks about that for what feels like the entire night. Outside everything sleeps. The trees never make a move, no sound. Small stars pockmark the dark like Braille and are lost again. She glances at Joohyun again and smiles and says, ‘Yeah. Okay then.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s go for a drive.’

And the beaming smile on Joohyun’s face tells her it’s the answer she wanted to hear. It’s the right choice. ‘You sure?’ she asks.

‘Yeah. Why not. Where’s the harm in it?’

‘What are you gonna do with this place?’

‘I’ll just lock it down for an hour or so.’

‘What about your boss?’

Seulgi shrugs.

‘What about the cameras?’

‘They don’t even work.’

‘What? Are you serious?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Isn’t that a safety hazard or something?’ Joohyun says. ‘I mean, what if you were robbed?’

‘Who’s going to rob me?’

‘Robbers, I expect.’

‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet.’

‘That sounds like tempting fate.’

‘Are we going for a drive or not?’ Seulgi says with a smile, perhaps a little presumptive, perhaps jumping the gun a slight. But Joohyun steps back and nods out the door and says, ‘Sure thing.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Wherever. I just like driving around. I never go anywhere in particular. I just sort of drive around, you know? Does that sound weird?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Anywhere you wanna go?’

Seulgi thinks about it. She says, ‘No. I don’t mind just driving around.’

It’s when they’re on the road going southbound listening to the engine and the gearbox churning mechanically with each shift that Joohyun, eyes still ahead of them, says, ‘I do this a lot. Most of the time. Most days.’

‘Just drive around?’

She nods, and there’s a sort of solemnity simmering just below the surface that is maddening in how much Seulgi wants to know more, wants to open it up. ‘Mostly in the mornings at this time,’ Joohyun says. ‘Before the sun comes up. When it’s just me on the roads and there’s no one to look at me or anything like that. When I can just be myself, alone with my thoughts, you know? There’s no one, nothing. There’s a term for it in German. You ever heard of wanderlust?’

Seulgi says that she has. It’s a term all too familiar to her.

‘Well, this is something like that for me. I can just sort of drift away when I’m here behind the wheel. Pretend I’m somewhere I’m not, that sort of thing. I dunno if that makes any sense when I talk about it.’

‘It makes perfect sense.’

‘Well.’

‘I do the same thing sometimes. A lot of the time. Except not in a car or anything, or not driving about. I can’t even drive.’

Joohyun doesn’t laugh. She just listens intently.

‘It’s really weird. I can’t describe it properly, but sometimes it feels like I’m living my life in a dream, you know? Like nothing’s really real. As if I’ll just wake up one day in my bed and everything will be different somehow. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way I live. Maybe it’s that everything I do feels like it’s inconsequential. There’s something strange about that, I’m sure. Or maybe it’s just because I’m lonely a lot of the time.’

‘Lonely.’

Seulgi shrugs. The truth comes out slowly but it comes out. She’s never been good at emotions. Joohyun drives and listens with a kind of comfortable acceptance of her, as if she already fully understands something that has yet to be spoken of. ‘I don’t get out the house a lot,’ Seulgi says. ‘Most of my time is spent talking to people online. Or looking things up. Or living vicariously through other people. And a lot of my time is spent reading and writing and learning things, dumb as that sounds.’

‘Why do you think that sounds dumb?’

‘Well, because it’s a vague answer, isn’t it?’

‘Vague how?’

‘Learning. What does that even mean, learning? I look things up that I find interesting and I read about them and jot stuff down and make little notes in these pads I have and then stash them away, mentally and literally. In case I might need any of later. Most of it’s useless stuff I find interesting for whatever reason. And I mean very useless.’

‘Like what?’

Seulgi shifts in her seat. The leather fits snug around her. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I could tell you how many Romans died at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC.’

‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Well, there you go. That’s what I mean. Or I could tell you the socio-political impact of Bismark’s military policies on Prussia and Europe in the late 1800s, if you wanted. Dumb stuff like that. Mostly history, sometimes geography. Occasionally it’s general knowledge.’

‘I don’t think any of that is dumb at all. I think it’s really cool.’

‘Yeah?’

Joohyun nods. She turns off at a random intersection, her eyes forever on the road ahead of them, watching out there in the dark in some sort of anticipation. In the pale moonlight she looks ethereal. She shifts down a gear with a clunk and says softly, ‘My problem is the opposite of that, I think. If you could call it a problem at all. Sometimes I sit and I think about how stupid I sound to even be complaining in the position I’m in. I think maybe I’m being entitled. Maybe I don’t deserve to feel like this.’

‘What do you mean?’

The answer is vague, skirting. ‘Sometimes I wish I could be on my own,’ Joohyun says. ‘For more than a couple hours at a time, I mean. This is the only time I really ever get to myself, besides sleeping. Driving around like this in the middle of the night is the only way I can really clear my head. Get it all out. Just let it drift away.’

‘Sorry, then.’

‘For what?’

‘For being here, I guess. If you wanted to be alone.’

‘I asked you to come along, didn’t I?’

‘Suppose you did.’

Joohyun smiles a soft and tender smile, one partially of exhaustion. ‘Look,’ she says, nodding out the window. ‘At the streetlights.’

‘What about them?’

‘Don’t you think they’re beautiful?’

‘I guess. Sort of.’

‘I do. I don’t know why, but I do. There’s something about them I can’t quite explain. Some sort of atmosphere I get from them that puts me at ease. It’s as if they’re there to keep me company, even when I’m alone like this. When I’m just thinking on things. Like I said, I get in my own head a lot. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it isn’t. But being around people all the time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

‘I can imagine. But neither is being alone. I think there’s a nice balance in there somewhere.’

‘Well,’ Joohyun says.

‘Well.’

‘If there is, I haven’t found it yet. I’m still searching.’

‘Me too.’ She looks at Joohyun again. Looks at her for a long time. Thinks about saying it. Then she does. She says, ‘Are you going to tell me if we’ve met before?’

‘What?’

‘Sorry. It’s just, I can’t shake this feeling that we’ve met.’

‘I don’t think we have. Well, so to speak. In a roundabout way, I suppose we have.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Joohyun shrugs. She’s distant and mysterious and it’s quite intoxicating to Seulgi. It’s what keeps her awake at night in bed, thinking about her. This midnight acquaintance she knows a good deal about already. Just one of those things. These answers that aren’t really answers at all. Joohyun drives her around in silence. The Lamborghini would draw so many eyes if there were any eyes around to stare. Instead it’s quiet streets dappled in the purple dark, small pale pools of streetlamp, neon broadways and ringed lights running in pink and fluorescent gold from the shopwindows and the nightclub signs. The windows frost in the cold.

‘Hey,’ Joohyun says.

‘What?’

‘You want something to eat?’

‘Sure,’ says Seulgi. She isn’t hungry at all but that can stay unspoken for now. Joohyun drives her somewhere far out of the way. Wherever it is seems to exist outside of creation. In the distance behind them the towerblocks scrape the sky, tall stems sketched out of the paper universe, grey and charcoal and mired in fog. The parkinglot is empty save one car at the far end, an old Ssangyong. The diner looks like something from 1950s America. There’s a dim pink glow of lights inside and the windows are murky and the sign hanging above the door wobbles with neon light. Joohyun pulls the car up and cuts the engine and sits a moment and smiles. She smiles at Seulgi.

‘Where are we?’ Seulgi asks.

‘Just a place I usually come to when I wanna grab something. It’s run by a friend of mine.’

‘Is it open at this time?’

‘No. It closes at midnight.’

Seulgi waits for clarification. Her wristwatch reads almost three. Then Joohyun says, ‘She’ll let us in, though.’

‘What?’

‘My friend. She closes at midnight and spends the rest of the night getting everything ready for the next day. Or something like that. I dunno. But she always lets me in.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why would I lie about that?’

Thinking about this for a second proves her correct. It would be a dumb thing to lie about in any circumstance. Seulgi follows her out and across the parkinglot. A single glance back has her stopping a moment and just gawping at the Lamborghini again, the sheer audacity of it there in the middle of isolated Seoul. ‘Come on,’ Joohyun says with an amused lilt in her voice. She stands by the window and peers in and waves and knocks twice. The girl behind the counter looks up and frowns at her and wipes her hands on a towel and unlocks the door for them. She’s small and has a striking face and her expression is part amusement and part irritation that Seulgi herself finds quite funny.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ she says, voice high and light.

‘No,’ Joohyun says.

‘It’s three.’

‘Earlier than I usually am.’

‘Are you going to introduce me or what?’

‘Yeri, Seulgi. Seulgi, Yeri.’

‘Hi.’

Seulgi smiles at her. ‘Hi. Nice to meet you.’

‘Likewise. Are you coming in?’

Seulgi spends a minute admiring the interior. The floors are a polished checkerboard linoleum. A single wooden ceiling fan spins languid in its roof fitting. The light tubes running around the room fill it with a soft pink hue that looks almost sordid. It smells of baking and coffeebeans and lavender air freshener. Joohyun offers her a seat by the window in a small booth. The seats are more like pews of red leather, the menus are cute little foldouts with pictures of burgers printed on the front.

‘You fancy anything?’ Yeri asks.

‘Two coffees, please.’

‘Anything to eat?’

She looks at Seulgi and Seulgi shakes her head. ‘I’ll have some of that chocolate marble cake,’ Joohyun says.

‘You going to pay for it?’

‘Sure.’

Yeri disappears into the back and leaves them alone. They look at each other and Seulgi looks away first. By the window the pink light washes over Joohyun in a way that has her heart stopping. ‘Hey,’ Joohyun calls out, eyes still on Seulgi across the table. ‘Can you play some music or something?’

‘No,’ Yeri calls back.

‘Please.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Something retro.’

A minute later the music from the back starts playing quietly. It’s a song Seulgi doesn’t recognise but it’s certainly eighties, a distant trancelike synth that has her tapping her foot along. ‘So,’ Joohyun says.

‘So.’

They look at each other and smile. Yeri brings out their coffee and a plate with a slice of chocolate marble cake on it and hands them over and disappears into the back to fix something up for herself. Seulgi checks her watch. Ten past three. ‘Your friend’s very nice,’ she says. ‘Letting us in here while she works, I mean.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you do this often?’

‘Yeah. Not all the time, but whenever I need a place away from things to just chill out. The car’s good, but sometime it catches the wrong attention.’

‘What’s the wrong attention?’

‘Any attention,’ Joohyun says, and it isn’t a joke. She slices off a corner of her cake with her fork and eats it in one languid motion that Seulgi watches, transfixed. As if she’s eating it in a way to make Seulgi blush on purpose. The coffeecup in her hands is too hot, the smell fresh and rich and overpowering. ‘It’s the only place I know I can go where I can be truly on my own,’ Joohyun says. ‘Well, was. Until I met you, I suppose.’

‘Why did you meet me?’

‘What?’

Seulgi shrugs. ‘I don’t know what I meant by that,’ she answers honestly.

‘You mean, why did I come in?’

‘Guess so.’

‘No particular reason. I didn’t know you’d be there. Didn’t even know anyone would be, honestly. I just genuinely wanted something to eat. Something to do, I suppose. But some things are just meant to be.’

‘Like us meeting?’

Joohyun smiles gently over the rim of her cup. The steam coils and wisps up in faint tendrils and disappears. ‘Something like that,’ she says, voice humming. ‘It’s not often I get to sit and talk to people like this, you know.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like this.’

She wants so desperately for Joohyun to clarify. The veil of mystery is as confusing as it is frustrating, but Seulgi has never been good at this sort of thing and perhaps that’s not so bad. Sometimes it can feel too invasive. Too personal. Instead she sips her coffee, still much too hot. The eighties tunes play on. Soft, pulsing synths. The clang of plates being washed in one of the sinks and the rattle of cake trays. It smells of freshly cooked dough again. ‘So is it every night you do this, then?’ she asks eventually.

Joohyun offers a small nod and drinks. ‘Whenever I’m not busy with work. I tend to just sort of drift from place to place whenever I get chance to. Like I said earlier, being around so many other people can get kinda exhausting. It’s not what I want. Sometimes I want to just be alone with my thoughts. Or with someone who feels the same way.’

‘Like me?’

‘Do you feel the same way?’

‘I think I do.’

‘Well then.’

Seulgi fights back the urge to ask her about her work again. It’s clearly a topic she doesn’t want broached but the desire to know more is as strong as it’s ever been. It’s only the sound of Joohyun’s friend from behind the counter that draws her back to the present. ‘You want some more coffee?’ she says, towel draped over her shoulder.

‘Sure,’ says Joohyun with a smile. She hasn’t even finished her first cup yet but Seulgi doesn’t point it out. She just sits there, moderately entranced by everything Joohyun does across the table. The way she is. Perhaps she’s the most attractive person Seulgi has ever seen. Or at least the most appealing. She eats her cake and sips her coffee and Seulgi just watches her for a long time. Joohyun in turn watches the night. The cold out there. Her car is the only one for as far as they can see. The streets are empty. Apartment blocks remain unlit and untouched, as if no one has ever really lived there. The neon casts them alone in the world. Yeri brings them two more steaming cups of coffee and takes away the half-finished ones and Joohyun’s plate. She flashes Joohyun a look that says something Seulgi can’t hope to decipher and so she doesn’t even try. She waits for Joohyun to speak. After a while she does.

‘Tell me something about yourself.’

‘Like what?’ Seulgi asks.

‘Anything. Something interesting. And don’t say there’s nothing interesting about you. I hate it when people say that.’

‘What if I genuinely don’t think there is?’

‘Then make something up.’

‘Really?’

‘No,’ Joohyun says plainly. ‘Don’t do that. I hate when people make stuff up. Act fake. I don’t think there’s anything I actually dislike more than people who pretend to be something they’re not. If you can’t be honest, don’t say anything.’

‘Well. I can’t argue with that.’ Seulgi blows on her coffee and sips it. The synths play on. She tries to formulate something proper to say and draws a blank. So instead she says, ‘How about you? Something interesting, I mean.’

‘You just gonna turn my question back on me like that?’

‘Sure.’

Joohyun is quiet, so much so that Seulgi is almost certain she’s going to remain that way, but then she says softly, ‘Sometimes I wish I grew up somewhere else.’

‘What do you mean? Another city?’

‘Country, I guess. Or place entirely. Another planet.’

‘What?’

To this Joohyun offers no response, only drinks her coffee. Time ticks on slowly. Synths blare, Yeri hard at work. ‘I like this,’ Joohyun says. ‘Being like this at night. I guess I’m nocturnal in a way. But I’ve already said that.’

‘It’s quieter.’

‘That it is.’

‘More time alone with your thoughts, you said.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know if I need that,’ Seulgi admits. ‘I get enough of that already during the day. I don’t know. Maybe I just need some friends. Or a hobby of some sort. Or a different job. Who knows. Maybe I should go back to studying.’

‘What did you study?’

‘I got my degree in world literature.’

‘Really?’ Joohyun says, a hint of surprise and intrigue.

‘Yeah. What? What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I just didn’t expect that, is all.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘I dunno. Just not that. That’s really cool.’

‘Maybe I’ll go back and do a master’s,’ Seulgi says. ‘There’s still time for February intakes, I think. If I decide soon enough.’

‘What would you do it in?’

‘I don’t know, honestly. That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want, or how to get it. I have all these ideas but nothing seems to come from them. Nothing seems to formulate itself properly. And maybe that’s my fault. I know nothing’s ever going to drop into my lap. But hey. Life is what it is, right?’

‘I guess so. In a manner of speaking.’

Seulgi sighs. ‘Coffee’s good,’ she says, playing absently with the ceramic cup handle.

‘Always is. Yeri brews it fresh.’

‘I should probably head back.’

‘To work?’

She nods. It takes all her energy not to convince herself to stay there the whole night, because in truth no one would notice. Or if they did, no one would care. Seungwan would show up just before six and think it had only been closed for an hour, give or take. But a job is a job, a promise a promise. An obligation the same. Joohyun runs a pale and slender finger around the rim of her cup. She seems to be lost in some ponderous thought for a moment. She says, almost too quiet to hear, ‘Sometimes I wish I could just get lost in the world, you know? Dumb and romantic as that sounds. Stupidly poetic. I wish I could just forget it all. Just go for a drive and never look back. Drive and drive and drive. Ideally with some music in the background, but that’s the whole gist of it. And sometimes I do, for hours at a time. But then the sun comes up and my time comes to an end. Then it’s back to everything all over again.’

Seulgi only watches her across the table. Right there in that grain of time Joohyun looks so very fragile, so different from that perfect smiling elegance, that reserved confidence in every glance. A sense of some murkier wistfulness there, a longing. An aching. Her fingers dance around the coffee cup. The neon light tubes make a mess of her face in pink and a lone strand of hair falls across cheek neat enough to look coordinated. Seulgi drinks off the last of her coffee. She thinks: This is really good coffee. Then as if on some strange tangent she thinks: I might love this woman.

And maybe she does. She thinks with another shared look there is a real possibility of that and it’s frightening. Genuine human connection comes rare to Seulgi. Love rarer still. How long has it been? Does it even matter? And does the absence of love serve to strengthen it, to make it harder when it finally comes back around? So that slowly even the smallest of gestures becomes something to love, or to fall in love over. Maybe three years ago she would’ve taken these encounters for what they may truly still be – nice and friendly and quite refreshing. Instead she thinks: I am in love. Am I in love? I don’t even know anymore.

The synths ring on, a delicate warble. On the counter at the front a small daisy sits wilted in a tin cup like a plastic ornament. ‘Do you want a lift back?’ Joohyun asks.

‘Sure. I mean, I have no idea where we are, so yeah.’

She expects Joohyun to laugh but she doesn’t. She doesn’t move either. She sits there pensive and restless and debating something in her own head, something that clearly has her room spinning. Maybe it will be their last encounter. Seulgi thinks of that suddenly, and the urge to tie it to something tangible and real becomes the forefront of everything. She stores it all away, the sights and sounds and smells. The lavender, the bread being baked in the back. The synths and the wilting daisy. The soft pink neon glow. These nocturnal natures.

‘I wanna show you something,’ Joohyun says.

‘Okay.’

The drive is in silence. Seulgi doesn’t ask where they’re heading and she doesn’t care. Her hands sit neatly in her lap and they’re jittering a slight but Joohyun doesn’t notice. Joohyun’s watching the road. Her own hands grip the steeringwheel far too tightly. It’s almost four in the morning. They drive through the centre of Seoul. The rows of lights descending along the avenues run over the hood of the Lamborghini in pale countenance and disappear in the warp of the night. Neon runs everywhere. People stumbling out of nightclubs watch them on occasion and Seulgi watches them back. When Joohyun stops the car it’s somewhere in Gangnam Seulgi hasn’t visited for a long time. The avenue in front of them forks in a thousand different directions and still there are no cars. Only the bright billboards posted enormous, like something from Times Square.

‘There,’ Joohyun says. She points at one of the huge billboards across the street. There are four or five of them, great illuminations, images and rolling text. One of them is for Mercedes. One Seulgi doesn’t care for. One for some makeup collection. And on the end an enormous ad for a new movie called STARGIRL. The billed name at the top in gold font reads BAE IRENE and the woman standing below in a black bomber jacket and wearing an iron crucifix looks uncomfortably familiar.

‘What?’ Seulgi says. The silence is awful. Joohyun sits there until she understands, as if she were a child encouraged to figure out the solution to a problem she never knew existed. She looks at the ad again. Something about a blockbuster. It has all already clicked into place, but her mind takes a long time to catch up. To calm down enough to piece it all together a second time. ‘Holy ,’ she says, to no reply. ‘Is that—’

‘Yeah. It is.’

‘You’re—’

‘Yeah. I am.’

‘Bae Irene.’

‘Just Joohyun.’

‘You’re—’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did I not realise?’

‘You did, didn’t you?’

‘I mean…’

Joohyun turns to her. Perhaps locked away in those beautiful eyes is a glimmer of obscene sadness. The last of the relief at having been ignored for so long, now run empty. ‘There you go,’ she mutters softly.

‘You’re Bae Irene.’

‘Joohyun.’

‘The Bae Irene.’

‘That’s me.’

‘Movie star.’

‘Something like that.’

‘CF star. TV star. Big star.’

‘Star,’ Joohyun says, hollow.

‘From that one film?’

‘Been in quite a few, actually.’

‘What was it called?’

‘Kiss Land?’

‘That’s the one,’ Seulgi says, mouth slightly agape. Outside the night rolls on. ‘How did I not recognise you properly?’ she says.

‘That’s a good question.’

‘Suppose it’s because I don’t watch many movies. I watched Drive, by the way.’

Suddenly the tension is resolved. There’s a flicker of relief and joy that lights Joohyun’s warm face again and has Seulgi’s heart soaring. As if she never expected to hear that. ‘Yeah?’ she says, genuinely interested.

‘Yeah.’

‘What did you think?’

‘Was okay, I suppose. Not my sort of thing. But you’re right, Ryan Gosling is very attractive. I mean, if I were into guys, you know…’

Silence. A weighing of options. Of truths. Joohyun shifts in her seat. Seulgi breaks the quiet by saying, ‘Is that why you go out at night? So you don’t get recognised as much.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry. For recognising you.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘I mean, right now.’

‘I showed you this, didn’t I? I’m surprised you didn’t catch on earlier. Not to sound egotistical or anything.’

‘You are pretty popular.’

‘I know,’ Joohyun says, hint of something there. ‘I’ll drive you back.’

‘Thanks.’

Seulgi spends the entire thirty-minute trip trying to think of what to say next. How to get her to stay. How to talk about the sensitive topic of her celebrity without making it seem awkward or probing. But the spoken word has never been as strong for her as the written, so eventually when they’re outside the gas station and it’s four thirty and the white Countach is the only car in the parkinglot she climbs out and offers a beaming smile and says, ‘You fancy some ice cream or something?’

‘Yeah,’ Joohyun says, smiling back. ‘I think I’ve worked up an appetite.’