The word made James think immediately of being young. ‘Family’, like ‘Christmas’, was an idea that belonged to his past, not his current situation.

‘I was very close to my dad. My father. But he’s dead – he died.’ He’s dead had never stopped sounding brutal, winding him, in the saying or the hearing of it. ‘My sister and I, actually, were close too, but we had a disagreement.’ James felt that he wasn’t holding up his end of the conversation very well, even though that was a strange thing to think about a Samaritans call. His list of setbacks didn’t seem substantial enough to justify having called; having confessed to being in despair. He searched for a way of explaining why the thing he was trying to tunnel through felt thicker than the sum of these parts.

‘You know – Tony Hancock, when he … well, when he died,’ said James. ‘He just said too many things seemed to go wrong. Something like that.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,’ said his younger listener, ‘but I do understand the feeling, of course. And it can seem like that for a long time – but also, life can change very quickly for the better.’

The slight easing that James felt, after the chat, lasted about a week – maybe more. But it wore off like aspirin, a little at a time, and he didn’t feel he could call up again. They must have more urgent cases to deal with, and he didn’t want to become a regular; he wasn’t a hypochondriac bothering a GP. What he needed was someone to sit and talk to. What he needed was to have friends again. And that urge had led to his ‘opening up’ to Steffi, someone who wasn’t really a friend, and that had been a terrible misjudgement which embarrassed both of them.

Well. It was gone, now. James listened to the footsteps padding up and down in the corridor; the lilt of the Welsh woman’s peppy voice as she chatted to the sports fans. ‘Yes, be a good game, I should think! You should get some sleep though, mind!’ People he didn’t know; people who couldn’t affect him. Nothing could really affect him any more. It had been as easy as the single touch which slid flight mode into action.