‘Where’s your coat?’ I asked Benjy. He was near me now, only ten feet away. Or maybe twelve feet. He’d stopped walking and was bent over at the waist, as though tired.

‘Never mind that,’ he said. Then he tried to spit, but it was all gloopy and just hung there until he wiped it away with the bag hand – the hand carrying the bag. There was something heavy in the bag. Small but heavy. That’s a good way of telling you about Benjy, too. He’s small but heavy. He used to say he was a boxer. His punches would just miss my chin when he showed me. He wasn’t really a boxer, but he knew about boxing. He went to matches and he watched videos of fights.

When he stopped bending over, he looked around, as if making sure there was no one else in the graveyard.

‘Got something you want me to hide?’ I asked. I’d hidden things for him before. Sometimes, weeks or months later, he asked for them back. Other times he didn’t. That was how I met him the first time. He was hiding a bag behind a gravestone.

‘Yeah,’ Benjy said now. ‘Me, for a start.’ I didn’t say anything. He made another of those groaning noises and tipped his head back. Then he said a swear word, and that made me a bit embarrassed. I looked away, leaning with one hand on my rake. The man who worked with me, my boss, had gone home ages ago, like most days. He told me what to do, and then went and sat in his hut with a newspaper or book, his radio, a flask of tea and some food. He usually threw away the sandwiches his wife made him and went to a baker’s instead. He never gave the sandwiches to me, and never brought back anything for me from the shops. I waited until he went home, then I picked the sandwiches up off the compost heap. I always checked them to make sure there were no bugs or bits of leaf.

So, anyway, it was just me and Benjy in the graveyard. The sun had left the sky, so maybe it was time for me to go home too. I can’t tell the time, so I have to guess these things. I do have a home, though. It’s a room in a house. There are other people in the house. And if I lose track of time, one of them comes and fetches me, if they remember…