When he’d phoned the Samaritans, the lady had tried to remind him that if things could change for the worse, they could also get better – as he’d seen for himself in the past. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ she had said, towards the end of the call. It was a moment in which he thought he heard her default mode – concerned, professional helpline monitor – morph into something more potent, into an appeal from one soul to another. ‘You could feel better than this.’ He had taken it seriously; he’d tried to hold it in his heart. Even in the past couple of months, with his general sadness so acute that it hurt physically to heave his big body out of the door – a pain he couldn’t point to or even locate, a leadenness in every limb. He’d continued to do things as if any day might throw him a raft, might sneak a magical turnaround into the plot.

He’d kept getting up in the morning, always checking his phone when he woke up in case Karl had found new evidence and realized James was blameless; or in case Sal had been in touch with an olive branch. In case Michaela … in case something had happened, in the night, to turn things around. He’d kept saying hello to Steffi, when their paths crossed. Going to work, smiling at customers, asking how he could help. He’d even kept trying to find dates on the app, until the night of his humiliation.

He’d given it every chance, was the point. I tried so hard, he thought to himself, annoyed at the lurch into self-pity. It was stupid. The train was idling in an empty station again: a station that would come gradually to life in the morning. There were the footsteps of the conductor outside; he knew her tread by now, the flat-footed plod, that pantomime un-quiet of someone who thought they were being discreet. He wished for a second that she would knock on the door; that they could talk. Just make small talk, kill another stretch of this silence. But he’d never been much good at that; if he was, maybe he wouldn’t be here. Anyway, James thought, I would probably cry. If she asked me anything. And he remembered crying on Steffi, and felt mortified all over again, and then relieved he was doing this.

He was heading to Edinburgh now, to the bridge, only because he had given the world a reasonable chance to prove that it ‘didn’t have to’ be like this, and the fact was it did have to, it was going to keep being like this, and he would much, much rather not be in the game than keep on losing it over and over again.