I was standing next to him on his balcony. Night had descended across London but there, high up above the streets, it was somehow still light. Not light in a luminescent sense but in the meaning of lightness. There was a weightlessness there.

He was clutching the railing, his fists white against the night. He might have been drunk. And if I was there, I was in a cloud of dark anger. He’d said something to me and I something to him which he’d bitten against.

‘You hadn’t earned that. That love,’ I might have said.

And he just drank and swallowed back his response. If he had one.

‘You can wish I were dead,’ he said at last. ‘But I’m not. I am still here. I’m still your brother. I still love you.’

His eyes would have been red – were red. The water was building up in them from the wind here at the top of the building.

‘You don’t love me,’ I said. ‘You, none of you ever loved me. You were all oblivious to me. And this … this is just guilt.’

‘Then I confess,’ he said, turning to me, tears falling freely now.

I shook my head and walked back into the flat. The floors were smooth and warm under my socked feet. In the low fridge in the kitchen area, I found myself a can of something to drink. Clicking it open, I headed back out to the balcony.

When I got there Rory was straddling the balcony barriers. They were metal so they could hold his weight, but I was alarmed.

I ran and stretched out my hand for him. He pulled his own back and as he did he wobbled on the rail.

‘No!’ I shouted.

‘Don’t come closer,’ he said. ‘I haven’t decided yet. I need to think it through. Wait.’ He held out a hand in my direction. I stopped in my tracks but was on my toes, ready to leap out and grab him. He looked like that boy I remembered, the one who cried over crisps. All I wanted to do was comfort him, rescue him.

‘Okay,’ I said and held out my palms. ‘Take your time.’

I waited and watched as the machinery in his head whirred. I followed him in my head, tracing the paths I knew he was taking and suddenly I realised where he was heading.

‘But you know you can’t redeem anything through death,’ I said quickly.

‘Ha,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure Jesus would agree.’

I swallowed. We were there – at Jesus – more quickly than I expected.

‘You’re Jesus now?’ I said. ‘Okay, then you’ll have to be killed. Suicides don’t provide redemption. Besides, an atheist like you? Come on, Rory. Stop being an idiot. Get off that wall.’