On the platform he looked briefly for Gina – it felt sort of appropriate to say goodbye, but maybe they had already done that. A lot of things could be a goodbye, he thought. A parting with no ceremony at all, a handshake. The most banal of contacts could turn out to be a farewell. A text, in this case: 158 texts.

He thought with a flutter of misgiving of all the responses. Those he’d seen; those that would still be arriving on the dead phone as it lay on the track, a hundred miles behind him. No. This was no time for anything like that. We knew it was going to be tricky, this bit, he told himself, hurrying through the familiar station. Familiar, although changed; there were building works, they’d moved an escalator. The toilets were free to use now. He relieved himself for what would be the final time and looked in the mirror. This was it. He felt the jangling of anticipation in every limb. That was normal. A sticker for the Samaritans was clinging to the sink – THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE TO TALK TO – and he thought about the woman he’d once called, and wondered what she might be doing now. Perhaps she was just coming off another shift, or getting ready for one. Perhaps she was, like anyone else, comfortably asleep, ready to rise to a weekend, with whatever cautious promise, whatever challenges, excitements, worries that might hold for her. Again he felt a sort of detached pleasure in others, in the idea of all the little lives. The station would change again, in a few years; so many people would come and go. It was a relaxing thought.

The cold air hit him at the top of the steps. There were a couple of taxis waiting at the rank, but he was only going around the corner. The Fruitmarket was advertising an exhibition of Cuban artists: there was a pastel drawing of someone playing a saxophone. The light was grey, neutral; the city didn’t mind what he did. No bagpipes till later in the day, he supposed. He and Sally had liked to make jokes about the drone of the bagpipes, which Dad had always insisted he enjoyed. What a beastly noise, he could hear her saying, in Famous Five character. A bus rumbled down the road. The castle was up there where it should be, the craggy surrounds of the city hemming it in.