It was gratifying. If he let himself dwell on it. But he was not going to do that, because it was also a trap. Where were you all when I actually needed it? James asked the silence. And it wasn’t a coincidence. They were texting now because he had forced their hand. It didn’t actually mean that anyone wanted him alive, particularly; otherwise he would never have been so cut adrift from them. They just didn’t want him to die in a way that would be on their collective conscience. That wasn’t the same thing. Once that momentary spark of gratification had died, he felt – if anything – indignant. You didn’t stop someone from killing himself by sending panicky texts when his mind was made up. It should have been their responsibility not to allow him to get anywhere near this helpless, this lonely. For the first time since he’d started to plan what he was going to do to himself, James felt a flexing of something like anger. It needn’t have got to this. It never should have, in fact. He shouldn’t have been left to rot like this, he shouldn’t have been abandoned by all of them. By Karl, Sally, Michaela; all these people who were suddenly so keen to avert disaster so that they’d sleep easily at night. He shouldn’t have been left out in the cold, exposed to everything like this, when he’d given so much protection to others. What about karma, or all those things? Not that you were meant to take those ideas literally, but you always believed there was something, as Mum might have said. Some safety net, some natural justice, so that you couldn’t just fall through the cracks and disappear. If you were doing your best. Some invisible system that paid you back some of what you deserved.

Come on. Snap out of it. This was just feeling sorry for yourself. It was just like having a tantrum if you lost a game. He’d lost; other people had won. It meant no more than the quizzes Mum made them play with the neighbours at Christmas. Nothing had to mean anything, from now on. He was free.

Without looking at any more of the messages, without even having read more than the first few words of the top few on his list of notifications, James brought the phone back out of his pocket and scrolled onto his settings menu. His hand shook a little as he slid his thumb back over the screen and reinstated flight mode. It should have been like that all along, he told himself again.