Melissa arrives just before 8 a.m. She’s early, she will have been called at home, I’m guessing. They wouldn’t have phoned her at 4 a.m., there would have been no point, but they probably rang as soon as they thought she might be up. Melissa is the Station Manager, the head honcho, you might say. She’s the sort of young woman men of a certain generation would refer to as a slip of a girl, although she is in her mid-thirties. She’s been working the Network since she was eighteen – I heard her say this to Tom one day, she started in Customer Services, just like him (although what she didn’t say to Tom was that she was a high flyer from the start, would have gone to university if it wasn’t for her dad’s Parkinson’s). She’s tiny, smart, authoritative. The middle-aged men on the station, some a foot taller than her, some twice her weight, would do anything for her.

Her heels click-click as she strides into the station in a navy wool coat, fair hair in a neat ponytail, a thick scarf wrapped around her neck. She nods to the two staff behind the Information counter; word has got round, of course, and everyone is serious this morning, rather than the usual jokes and smiles. She turns left on Platform One, smartly, towards her office, which is tucked away behind the West Cornwall Pasty Company.

Inside, Melissa unwinds her scarf – a lengthy process as it is very long and wrapped around her several times, like a python. Her mum knitted it for her last Christmas and has promised her matching wrist-warmers this year. She hangs up her coat, then puts on her red VTEC jacket. She will go and talk to the staff first of all, make sure everyone is okay, then go to Platform Seven and take a look around. The main purpose of this is to check there is no sign of what has occurred overnight but it is also a kind of homage on her part, an acknowledgement. The least she can do for her staff is to stand there for a few minutes and imagine what it was like for them.