If you have been talking about yourself because you like to talk about yourself, because your followers are not listening, because your social-media friends are not responding, taking the bait, because you want to be like everybody else with a problem that isn’t really a problem, you will ask yourself that question. And you will realise that you want to live.

You may not understand why, but you will know that you do.

That’s when your choice is taken.

That’s your trigger.

That is the design.

Here’s the trick, they all want to live.

Because we are good at what we do. We help the ones who need it. And we kill the ones who do not.

96

236–255

Tower Bridge looks smaller than it does in the pictures.

It’s still a long way down.

It will work.

A woman at the nearest set of traffic lights scratches her backside, thinking that nobody is watching. The usual wave of joggers trot by. Everyone else is a tourist with a camera.

Everyone but us. The People of Choice. All courage and no fear. That’s what we say. But we don’t mean it. We don’t know what we are doing, who we are.

A group of kids on a school trip whizz past us, smelling of fast food and body odour. Then three women with naturally olive-coloured skin head in our direction, wearing sunglasses on this grey London day. They are followed by an Eastern-European family all wearing woollen hats and scarves.

All of them are walking in the wrong direction.

They will miss the show.

The water is less calm at this end of the river. Every part appears to be moving. Every wave has a ripple, every ripple has a crease and every crease a small fold. Three of us will hit the Thames. Maybe break a neck, a leg. Maybe survive the fall but not the current.

In the reception area, we each have to pay and place our bag on the conveyor belt. This is why we don’t have ropes this time. Just our bodies. And the way that gravity will ensure our organs continue to move towards the floor even when our ribcages have stopped.

We queue for the lift. Neither of us knowing any of the others, yet knowing what we have to do. How to get up. How to get out. How to get down.

The doors close inside the lift and it starts its ascent. The man pressing the button offers a few wisecracks and thoughtful figures. He tells the gathering that the passageways we are about to venture across are 140 feet above the Thames.

‘It’s not that far up, but it’s a long way down,’ he jokes.

Foreigners laugh at his cue.

We do not.

Domine Derige Nos is etched on parts of the magnificent construction.

Domine Derige Nos.

Lord Direct Us.

We do not need guidance from the Lord.

We know what we are doing.

The final twenty.