He’d gone to the fridge and started trying to talk as he looked around for a chunk of cheese. He was embarrassed even by the fridge smell which escaped. ‘It’s just hopeless, it’s just hopeless,’ he said, his voice cracking.

‘What is hopeless?’ asked Steffi, polite, but – it was obvious enough, he thought – hoping not to get trapped here.

‘Too many things are wrong,’ James just about managed to say, shielding his wet face as Steffi awkwardly reached for his shoulder. He kept talking, and she tried to say useful things, but it didn’t get better as he talked; it got, if anything, worse. He thought of the Samaritan conversation a few weeks back. If he didn’t do something soon, this was what he would become: a supplicant, a patient.

When he woke up, a chilly clarity settled on him, and he did do something. First, he took the day off work, not even contacting them. At first there were calls from Waqar, then a couple of texts. Then it stopped. It stopped, and nothing replaced it. Nobody pursued him. Nobody expected anything of him at all. It was as if he didn’t exist.

He thought about the sleeper, Edinburgh, the half-plan he’d come up with before. About what it would be like if everything went away. It wouldn’t be ‘like’ anything. It would just be an absence of pain. You didn’t need a big grand reason to do it. You just had to have run out of ideas, as a human, and be brave enough to admit it.

He booked the sleeper that evening. Boarding just before midnight on 8 March. The date went into his mental diary. He thought about exactly how he was going to do it, and started to feel better immediately.

*

About a month after they came back from their European holiday, Karl and James had a synchronized day off. To rekindle something of the freewheeling atmosphere of the holiday, Michaela came up with an idea. ‘Why don’t we do the Monopoly Challenge?’

‘I’m not playing Monopoly with him again.’ Karl was lying on the sofa, bare feet up on the armrests. ‘Have you played with him, man. You think he’s running out of money and then it turns out he set up an ISA or something before the game even started.’

‘It’s not a game of actual Monopoly, it’s … have neither of you ever done this?’ Michaela shook her head, outraged. ‘All right. We’re doing it. You have to get round London – actual London – and visit all the places on the Monopoly board. You have to take pictures for proof, text it to the other people …’

‘I don’t even have a phone,’ James began, ‘I mean, not one that can …’

‘Yes, you’ll have to send them by fax.’ Michaela tweaked his cheek-fat. ‘All right, you and me v Karl.’