A couple of people glanced in James’s direction. The blood burned in his cheeks. Surely someone had heard this. Surely the whole point of a supervisor was to protect him from things like this. There were even signs up around the station about not abusing the staff. But when he spoke to Waqar, Waqar said that there was a procedure for complaining about customers. ‘You gotta download a PDF. I can give you the link. Yeah? And obviously the more info you can give them about whoever this guy was, the more chance they’ve got of doing something about it. Yeah?’ James nodded. He didn’t say anything. There were tears in his eyes, and he turned his back and began to rummage in his locker for something that wasn’t there.

That night, James did look up the relevant form. File a Customer Abuse or Harassment Report, said the heading, in a cheerful font which would have been at home on the website for a boutique hotel. As soon as he started typing, a pop-up box asked whether he would be interested, after filing this report, in answering some questions about how easy it was to use; he could win a case of champagne.

As he was typing the words ‘made an obscene remark about my weight’, trying to pretend he was doing this on behalf of someone else, James’s eye was caught by a GIF in the top right of the page. Begin your magical journey! it said. The Scott Monument on a rainy, glistening Princes Street, fireworks above. He thought about watching those fireworks with Dad, the night Dad had asked him to scatter the ashes. The wild spots of light across the black sky, the gunpowder smell far off. James had grinned into the darkness, but when he looked across, Mr Chiltern – who had always loved fireworks – was shaking a little, his hands clasped together.

He clicked on the link. He thought about what it would be like to leave his workplace, walk straight down the road to Euston, get on the train to Edinburgh and disappear there, disappear for good. It was only half an idea, for now, but it was surprising how much comfort it gave him. The next morning, as Waqar greeted him with some minor jibe, James looked straight past him at the few hundred metres of road between here and that escape. It was so close, it could be so real.

*

And now here it was; he just had to keep his nerve for what was not even two hours.