‘It’s a fair question, fam. Because it actually brings us on to something I wanted to ask you about. This is a bit difficult. I got the phone by making use of my credit card, right. But that does bring me close to the credit limit, which I didn’t realize, so I’m going to have to ask you a favour.’

James smiled. It was promising, having this man who hardly knew him, ask a favour. James felt he was at his best when helping out, being a steady pair of hands, as his school report described him – something which Sally criticized as faint praise (‘you’re better than that’) but which James himself was pleased with. ‘How close to the credit limit, and is the favour helping you with the rent this month?’

‘Close to the point of being, arguably, over it,’ said Karl, ‘and yes, although I feel like a dick, I’m going to have to ask you if you could pay a bit of it on my behalf.’

‘How big a bit?’

‘A very big bit,’ Karl conceded, ‘by which I mean, all of it.’ James laughed out loud, and Karl brandished the phone by way of explanation. ‘Again, yes, I probably shouldn’t have bought it, but: look at this, right. This app is a fishpond and you can send fish to people who have the same phone. We need to copy this idea. This is what everyone is going to want.’

‘Imaginary fish?’

‘Connection. Networks. The world is one massive team, fam. We don’t know the half of it yet.’

The James of then nodded, agreeing as he always did, thinking sheepishly that although this was almost certainly true, he himself didn’t need much of a network beyond what he already had: his family, a couple of friends, and now Karl himself. The James of now, ten years on, winced at the crack of the ring-pull, which sounded rather dramatic in this enclosed space: as if he was trying to make some sort of point by opening the can. When in actual fact he wasn’t trying to express anything at all. He, ‘James’, was nothing any more – that was the idea. He was passive here, with the creaking and moaning of the train’s body around him. Everything could just carry on without him. This wasn’t an act of aggression, just withdrawal.

He swigged from the can, feeling the metallic taste crawl across the back of his tongue. The moment of sensory engagement brought James back into being himself, and he looked at the gagged phone and thought how strange it was that you could go, so quickly, from that to this. From being protected, feeling that you had a place in the world, to this: sitting on a sleeper train, with a bag of beers, knowing you were going to commit suicide shortly after the sun came up.