He thought about all the paths that must have been drawn between strangers. He felt he could see Dad looking across from the other side of the bridge, and he resented that he’d been made to have this thought. He shut his eyes. When he opened them, Gina was hauling herself onto the edge, and James’s knees felt old and weak. He tried to tell her to stop, to get back down, but no words came out. A crowd was building. Gina was looking down on him. Away on each side, the hills were a face, its mouth open, ready to consume anyone. Gina was standing above him now. She reached down and brushed her arm against his.

‘It’s not right for you to do this,’ she said – gentle now, reasonable. He had the thought that there was no difference between being him and being her; being one person and another. Perhaps the thought made no sense, but it was easier on the mind than all the thoughts of the night, and the other nights. He could smell Gina’s body and he could sense her heartbeat; he could almost hear the breath going in and out of her. ‘It would be right for me to do it. It’s my time; it isn’t yours.’

‘What do you mean?’ James said. ‘What do you mean, your time?’ It wasn’t how it worked, he wanted to say. If it wasn’t right for him to jump, he wanted to say, then it wasn’t right for her, either.

The city watched the two of them, Gina up on the edge of the bridge, James bewildered on the pavement, as they looked one another fully in the face.

34

EDINBURGH, 08:01

When the body fell, the person inside it remained a person for the few seconds it took to hit Market Street below. In that time, everything in the brain screamed that it was a mistake, that any form of life to come would be better than to turn the lights out for ever. At least, that was what survivors of suicide attempts very often reported feeling. That, and a gratitude for what might be ahead. But nobody could actually know what was in the falling person’s head. That was their final privacy.