‘It’s sweet that you care. But I’m not sure this is your area. I shouldn’t even have told you. I wouldn’t have done if I’d known you were gonna pick a fight with a metal girder.’

‘Of course you should’ve told me.’

‘I just need to disappear for a while,’ she said. She tipped her head back and stared across the bridge. Closing her eyes, she let a hint of a smile form. ‘Feels like less of a prison sitting up here. Being able to see the way out.’

I gazed through the gaps in the criss-crossed iron fencing opposite us. The railway line was dormant, stretching below into the darkness. A blur of green signal flickered miles down the track, awaiting the first train of the morning, still a couple of hours away. She was right: it did make the place feel less of a prison. Like studying a map, or letting your eyes follow a plane arcing across a clear sky, it gave the promise of freedom.

‘It’s like we’re half dead already, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘And just waiting for them to finish us off. And they will, you know. Just like those other guys did with Kenny.’

‘I won’t let it happen.’

‘Kenny probably thought that as well.’

‘So what? Maybe we’re smarter than he was.’

She looked at me from the corner of her eye, but said nothing. She didn’t need to. Insecurity in the face of a dead man’s reputation was not endearing. ‘He didn’t know it was coming. That’s what I’m saying.’

I stood and walked to the fence. I propped my forehead against the cold, domed rivets. My eyes unfocused, just resting on the distant darkness. My mouth hung open and was dry, each inward breath bringing a new image into my head. But they weren’t the images that I lived with day in day out: my dead body, booted feet smashing my face and skull, knives tearing through flesh, plumes of blood pumping from open arteries. Now the images were different. They were flashes of success, of triumph. Of a new life with all this left behind. A new life with Sophia.

‘That song,’ I said, still facing away from her, ‘the one on Kenny’s bench.’

‘The old Queen song?’

‘Yup.’

She climbed to her feet and came over to me. ‘What about it?’

‘Maybe it’s all nonsense.’

‘Shut up. It’s a beautiful song.’