‘Coffee, bacon roll, orange juice,’ she said, and James thought – yes, he had ordered those items when boarding last night, to seem normal, and he had better take them and at least pretend he wanted them. His stomach growled appreciatively. On some level he did still want them. The mind and body kept going right up to the wire, until you stopped them, until you escaped.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Gina gave him a sort of guarded, wise smile, a morning-after smile. ‘Sorry about all that.’

‘About?’

‘All the drama.’

It was hardly drama, was it, he thought. If she had any idea what he was about to do! But then, ‘drama’ was a strange way to describe that, too. It was a strange way to describe any sort of actions, emotions, really: what else were people meant to do, what else did they have?

‘It was … you don’t need to apologize,’ he muttered. He tugged at the tiny silver-foil tag to open the carton of orange juice; the carton spat a bit of juice onto James’s jumper, and the two of them glanced at it for a second and almost laughed.

‘I’ll get you a cloth?’ she said.

‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ said James. Their eyes met again. He had the thought, which he could not afford to entertain at all, that they might have got on well if they’d met in other circumstances. If they’d met in life. He cleared his throat. ‘I hope things pick up for you.’

‘You take care of yourself,’ she said, stepping a little further into his cabin as a man in an overcoat tried to pass her in the corridor. ‘You take care of yourself for me.’

James nodded, without saying anything, and Gina nodded too, as if they were agreeing on something that was difficult to express. She shut his door with a delicacy that surprised him, as if – after all this time – she were trying not to disturb him.

*

Blue-grey had crept in under the blind. James pulled it up tentatively; the stone arches of the station were outside, a seagull hopping about on the platform. Recorded announcements, the words indistinct. Above them was the theatre he knew, could conjure with his eyes shut. Princes Street, the new Ferris Wheel which Dad had never seen; the Scott Monument, where they stood to watch the fireworks. The tower like a grizzled old policeman on permanent watch. And above all that: the bridge. It was time. He picked up his plastic bag. It was best to get on with this quickly.

He felt light-headed and foggy in the way he normally did after a whole night awake. That was fine. They were the right mental conditions to be in.