He’d woken at eleven on a Saturday, having slept badly, and the emptiness of the day ahead descended on him as if the plasterwork had come crashing down from the ceiling. He had no plans; nobody would want to see him. Everyone had kids, or they were in couples having brunch, or they were just mysteriously away as people so often seemed to be when you were yearning for them. His last online date had ended in a humiliation so complete that he couldn’t imagine opening the app again; it felt as if everyone else there could see him, pitied him. Thoughts like that were irrational; they were not the sort of thoughts James was used to having – not until he lost the job, if it was possible to identify a turning point. Since then, they’d been more and more common, and it was exhausting to carry them around.

He went into the hall, made sure Steffi was out. His body felt heavy, his legs reluctant to carry him even this couple of dozen steps. Her bedroom door was open – chaos inside, as usual, as if she’d had a fight with herself in there. In the bathroom, the shower was dripping. James went to turn it off, returned to his room, picked up his phone and typed the strange word into Google. S-a-m. The algorithm finished it off for him. The future Karl had once predicted was here, now; maybe the phone knew you were miserable just from the way you sat on the edge of the bed with it.

His fingers went over the numbers on the screen. 116 123. It felt too short for a phone number. Even as the dial tone sounded in his ears, James doubted that he was going to go through with this. He wasn’t even certain he expected it to be answered. Calling the Samaritans felt like something you did at midnight, not before lunchtime. But it was answered, almost straight away, and it was too late to go back. It was a woman’s voice. She asked what he wanted to talk about. James swallowed and clawed at his scalp and managed to say that he was very lonely, and that he’d been thinking about … not being here any more.