He sat on the toilet with the phone in front of him, thumb racing up and down the screen, trying to make sense of what Steffi was saying, what everyone was saying. Karl’s mate in the pub had been on about how a hundred people a year got seriously ill from taking their phones to the toilet, but this was the same guy who made the claim about the Sudoku, and the more Karl thought about it, the more he was full of bullshit. For a second the thought of his stupid friend lifted a little weight from Karl, but then – it leapt out at him from the lines and boxes of text, from the weightless emojis – what was this, what did this mean? We have some thoughts that he might have been at Euston. Or might be on a train from there even.

Karl felt his knees, bared in front of him, tense and groan with post-drive ache. His knees and his back. He felt as if he could pass out here. What the fuck would James have been at Euston for? You didn’t jump in front of a train at a station, did you. But ‘on a train’? What trains were there at midnight, except night trains? He thought about James and his dad, about Edinburgh, and his heart felt wedged in his throat as he stood up, almost dropping the phone on the floor.

He’d thought he was alone in the bathroom, but standing at one of the sinks was the DJ. He was even taller than he’d looked in the back of the car; he was like a basketball player. Karl winced at the sight of his former passenger, splashing water onto his face. Couldn’t he even be rid of the guy in this shitter? Was the bloke going to show up at Karl’s house back in London on Monday?

‘I thought you were – I mean, should you not be sleeping? I thought you were quite into your sleep.’ It didn’t come out with the satirical edge Karl was used to pulling off; his voice was tuneless.

‘Got another gig.’ The DJ raised his eyebrows as their looks met in the expensive mirror. ‘Love Soup, you heard of it?’ Karl shook his head, weakly; he had no idea what the guy was talking about; he felt like he would have struggled to remember his own surname at the moment. ‘Nutters, mate,’ said the DJ. ‘They’ve been going at it all night, some sugar mill place or something, and now I have to do a chillout session thing at, like, eight a.m. Getting too old for this!’ His tone suggested that he was, on the contrary, dealing pretty well with the years; improving with time, if anything. He turned around and looked at Karl with sharp enquiry. His eyes seemed big and inquisitive, like a child’s, under the artificial light.