He thinks of his old friend Rocket. Real name Laurence, although he only discovered that from the order of service at his funeral. Rocket was older, seventeen to his fourteen, apprentice mechanic to precocious year-nine student, but the two of them had hit it off nonetheless. Nothing bothered Rocket. He was a lairy long-haired loudmouth who lit everything up. Lived to laugh and fuck and fight – his words. The car was found parked up along the coast at Beachy Head. The coast guard found Rocket a little after that.

He wondered for months afterwards what Rocket was thinking of in those last moments before he jumped, toes overhanging the cliff edge, pale face in the moonlight, so desperate. Was he crying? Was he longing for someone to love him enough to talk him down? Did he see his funeral in his mind’s eye?

And now he knows it wasn’t like that at all. It’s so simple, really. It’s just that the thought of dying is less crushing than the thought of living. That the idea of ending your life brings less anxiety than having to admit to everyone the mess you’ve made of it. The lesser of two evils.

He imagines it for a second: his name in granite. Alfie Lim. Visualizing his own gravestone doesn’t shock him like it once did. In any case, it’s less shocking than other things he can imagine. Tomorrow, for example. Or the day after that.

The first light of dawn seeps whiteness into the fog as Alfie reaches the level crossing where Patten’s Island meets the marshes. He weaves through the vegetation to the side of the road. The ground is soon firm beneath his feet as he walks on the stones alongside the tracks.

Something occurs to Alfie as he walks, neither fast nor slow. There’s some sort of order to his thoughts. He can actually think. He can actually process why he’s doing this. It’s been weeks since any real thinking about the towering walls of problems that surround him has resulted in anything other than a crashing of his brain’s circuitry. But now a hint of clarity returns. A suggestion of order in the chaos that has taken over his days and nights.

He thinks about that day, all those years ago, when they said goodbye to his dad. Was that when everything changed? Did that event make this one inevitable? He’s always missed his dad, sure. But if there’s anything he’s really yearned for from the before, it’s how he could be real. He could be honest back then. To only have to be yourself – what a wonderful thing that would be!