It occurred to James that he could offer them his cabin, just for the couple of hours that remained. He didn’t really need it. It was better being out here than in there. He could happily walk up and down for the rest of it. He looked at the woman, attempting a reassuring face; it seemed to fall as flat as everything always did. She took her eyes away from him, brought the infant right up to her face and kissed her tiny nose, and the idea of initiating any sort of conversation seemed so ill-conceived that he felt ridiculous. He turned and walked back towards the corridor, noting the onrush of a new town: the train’s pace easing, the closing-in of houses, hotels. He jumped; Gina was standing there, looking out of the window. Next to her was a little trolley stacked with trays. Foil-topped orange juice cartons, a silver coffee jug. She was on her phone – she must have found a way to charge it, he thought – but at James’s approach she stuffed it with apparent haste into her jacket pocket.

‘Not quite breakfast time yet,’ she said. This might be the last time ever that someone glanced at his body and assumed he was thinking about food. ‘Didn’t manage to drift off?’

‘Yes, um, not easy to go to sleep,’ said James. Carlisle, he thought, this would be Carlisle. This was where they split the train. ‘Still. Not long …!’

‘Are you all right?’ asked Gina, as he had asked her before.

He glanced sideways at her: the reddish eyes, round face. The bluntness of the question had him outflanked, for a moment.

‘Yes,’ he said – it was true, in a way. It would be true pretty soon. Without knowing why, he added: ‘and you?’

Gina allowed the shadow of her smile across her face. ‘Well. It’s hard sometimes, isn’t it.’

‘It certainly is,’ James agreed.

In the game they were playing, the game everyone on earth was playing, the character of James still had a number of options, and the correct one could change an incalculable amount. Do you: ask the woman for more details about what has been troubling her? Or start to talk a little about your own unhappiness; about the fact you’re on your way to kill yourself? Or just let the conversation fizzle out and go back to your cabin? Press A. Press B. Press C. For a second he wanted to play the game. Push the button, see what happened.

‘What …’ He moistened his lips with his tongue. They were standing close, next to one another, like people at a bus stop, fenced in by the trolley; the rushing countryside on one side, the cabin doors the other. A narrow space for two people to share. James dropped his voice. ‘What … are there things which are particularly difficult?’