The mist cleared for a moment and Fabian could see him sitting there, dangling his feet, waiting for the next train.

‘Theodor,’ he said, trying hard not to let fear shade his voice. ‘Theodor, sweetheart. Why don’t you come here so we can talk about it instead?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. Go home to your family and let me take care of this.’

‘But you are my family. Hey… please, come here.’

‘I’m a freak, that’s what I am. A fucking freak.’

‘No, Theo, you’re not—’ He was cut off by the sound he knew so well from his years in Stockholm. There, it was so ubiquitous he had eventually stopped registering it, except for when it had been so loud he’d had to cover his ears. Out here, the barely perceptible yet so very ominous whispering of the rails was enough to unnerve him completely.

‘Please, come here!’ He didn’t know how far away the train was. It could be anything from minutes to seconds. ‘Theo, I’m begging you!’ he shouted. ‘Come over here now, before it’s too late!’

Theodor neither replied nor turned around. Instead, he just sat there, peering down into the mist, retreating further and further into himself.

Whether it was panic or a stubborn refusal to admit Greta was right in her prediction, it didn’t matter. He had no choice. He couldn’t just stand there and watch his son let go.

Climbing the fence wasn’t too hard, though the outward angle was harder to negotiate than he’d thought.

‘Theodor, please!’ he called out as the rails stopped whispering and started screeching. ‘This isn’t what you want.’ With one hand on the old wooden railing running outside the taller steel fence and one foot on the edge of the bridge, he cautiously placed his other foot as far out on the protruding metal wing as he could. ‘You’re not a quitter. You’re a fighter. You hear me? A fucking fighter! You always have been.’ He put as much of his weight on the outer foot as he dared. ‘You’re going to make it. I know you’re going to make it!’

The creaking underneath him was drowned out by the howling rails. But he didn’t need to hear it to know the metal wing was about to break under his weight.

‘For fuck’s sake, Theodor!’ he bellowed, and his son finally turned around and held out his hand.

The next moment, the train came and everything happened so fast that in hindsight, Fabian could only recall a few disjointed flashes. Like that the train thundering past below never seemed to end. Or that the metal wing creaked again and suddenly tilted so severely Theodor had to hold on not to slide down it. That he screamed.