‘It’s always there, but it’s never the first thing you see. So Leo thinks he dies on the train, or maybe falls in front of it, and he tends just to wait at Bodmin station or in the woods round there, if you ever want to find him. He’s the one who calls it a glitch. His theory is that if your death is unsolved you can’t rest. Or go on to whatever else is out there, or anything.’ She gives me a big grin. ‘And that’s something, isn’t it? I take a huge amount of comfort from it: the fact that there’s life after death. I was brought up Catholic, then I was an atheist for years and years, but we are actual walking, talking proof of an afterlife, right?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘And you think we’ll go on to something else, when we sort this out?’

‘God only knows what. I doubt it’s going to be a glittering heaven or a flaming hell. I guess the whole point is that we can’t imagine it. So, according to the Bodmin guy, you glitch if the official story of your death and the thing that really happened don’t match up. You can’t move on without an ending: it’s about your life making sense.’ She grimaced a bit. ‘He also reckons we’re all in a simulation, that we’re not so much at the mercy of God as some kind of technology programmer in the future, but you know. Whatever. Maybe they’ll fix their computer? Or God will notice us. Or perhaps those are the same thing.’

I try to take it all in. I know I’ll be coming to visit Lara on this train a lot. I feel warm inside, better and less alone than I have for ages.

‘But what happens if they don’t?’ I say. ‘Can we move on?’

I notice how quickly I’ve abandoned any kind of hope that I might be alive and thirty-five. I think I knew, really, that I’ve been dead for many years.

‘I’m guessing here,’ she says. ‘There’s not exactly a textbook on the subject. But there was a woman I used to see at Paddington. We spoke a couple of times. She was definitely glitching. We compared notes, and then she stopped being there. I haven’t seen her for years. My theory – well, Leo’s really – is that if the “mystery” gets “solved”,’ she adds, making air quotes with her fingers, ‘then you can go on to … whatever’s next.’

‘So I really, really need Ariel,’ I say. ‘If I want to stop all this.’