Hands in pockets and shoulders tensed, Will crosses the main road. The further he walks, the fainter the shouts of his full name become. Soon they stop altogether. His face burns more than ever before. In his wet eyes, the orange lights of the street lamps become starbursts. He wishes he had Beppo with him. Even just his lead. The thought doesn’t help.

Will leaves the road and tramps across the dark marshes. How long’s he been walking now? It’s hard to say – an hour, ninety minutes maybe? He reaches the main line that runs parallel to the coast. With few trains running at this time of night, he walks the track, striding between the sleepers. Only when he reaches the level crossing at Ebbswick does he stop.

He crouches on the grassy embankment. Beside him, the rails gleam in the moonlight. In front of him, the main road is almost deserted. A van passes, rumbling over the crossing. Will follows its tail lights as it passes the derelict shops where Danny’s car broke down.

Are we going to speak ever again, Will wonders, or is this it? He gazes up the road as it curves into Patten’s Island and thinks of Nain, at home right now. He knows there has to be an expiry date on her current good patch. Looking to his left, his gaze follows the road that leads to the front. Demolition fencing circles the rubble-strewn ground where two months ago the library stood.

A warning siren begins to bleat. The traffic lights flash red. Will steps a few metres back from the line as the rails hum and the barriers descend over the road. At eighty miles per hour, a ten-carriage express hammers past. The noise and the vibration and the rushing of the wind shake something out of place in Will, like a blockage from a pipe.

He drops to his knees and he cries. He really cries. So hard he struggles for breath. Not just because of the row with his dad and brother. Not just because he fucked it up with the only girl he’s ever loved. Not just because he’s been awake for forty hours straight. But because of it all. He feels as though his world is shifting beneath him, as if one era is being ushered out, a new one in. He cries for what’s being left behind. And he cries because he fears the unknown up ahead.

‘What now?’ he says to the night, everything quiet once again. ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do now.’

I am right here with you. I am always with you.

Please don’t cry. And don’t beg for my help like that. I need you. You need me. But not tonight. The things you’ve done this weekend, they are important. And you did them all without a word from me – perhaps that’s the most important thing of all.