James sat there as the old man tapped out, one finger at a time, messages to his son – who was in the RAF in Canada – and his little granddaughter who lived on a military base there. He’d showed Gavin how to attach a photo of himself for the little girl: a photo James had taken on his own phone. He reminded Gavin how to keep his inbox open in a browser window, so he’d see when a reply came in, and set up an alert that would make a noise to let him know, just in case. Gavin told him, as usual, that he feared his son had married ‘a bit hastily, like’, and that he ‘didn’t recognize the names of half the shops and restaurants round here any more’. Gavin had said these same things every time, but James didn’t think there was a problem with his memory; he thought Gavin enjoyed the repetition. As he was showing himself out, down the gauntlet of stairs which felt an awfully long way for a man in his seventies to go, James wondered whether the son would get in touch, whether anyone would get in touch, until he was back there the following week.

Outside the tower block, rain in his eyes, fallen leaves being mashed to a paste in the gutter. James pulled down his hood and quickly tucked his phone into his pocket; a bit of rain could really damage them. He was on his way to the bus stop when someone, a woman, raised her voice behind him. He heard something in it, an appeal for help. He gritted his teeth against the lash of the rain and turned around. She was a tall, reedy-looking woman with a smoker’s yellowed teeth, what Mum might call a ‘lived-in’ look; but not much older than him, he thought, although it was hard to be sure about anything in this weather, in the murk of the night. She had her hands over her stomach and he saw that she was pregnant.

‘Please help me,’ said the woman, ‘I think I’m going to lose the baby.’

‘Sorry?’ asked James, feeling immediately out of his depth and looking around, through instinct, for someone who might not be. There was no one. The few passers-by, if anything, quickened their strides, looked at the pavement, sensing in this tableau something vaguely threatening, something they didn’t want to be part of. They had their own problems, their own plans. The woman reached out and touched his sleeve, communicating some sort of need that James desperately hoped he could meet.

‘I need to get to the hospital,’ said the stranger. ‘I don’t know what to do. There isn’t anyone to help.’