I’ve also seen him on the walkway itself, head slightly down, the slow but purposeful trudge. I was on Platform One, near Melissa’s office, and looked up and to the right and there he was, crossing the walkway in the same steady manner, passing right through any passengers rushing the other way. I looked away, then back, and he was at the beginning of the walkway again, still crossing it. No matter where he is on the station, he is always heading towards Platform Seven.

*

The day after I visit Dalmar in his sparse bedsit, I see the man again, at the beginning of the walkway, about to commence his trudge across, and I decide to follow him. At the top of the steps that lead down to Platform Seven, I hesitate: so many bad associations there.

I go down and along the platform and see him immediately, at the far end, the man. He’s sitting on the metal bench, of course.

It is broad daylight, and yet he has the same hunched posture he had at 4 a.m. when I tried and failed to stop him throwing himself in front of the freight train, the folding-in of the body designed to minimise his surface area against the cold but the coldness inside him is defiant. The pale winter sun above us means nothing to him. For him, it is pitch dark and 4 a.m., again and again. He isn’t free-floating like I am; he is reliving those final moments. He is always on the station, always entering, climbing the stairs, trudging across the covered walkway, always huddled on that bench.

This thought gives me courage and I approach him. He is wearing the heavy jacket, the donkey jacket. He has the hat pulled down low, just as he did then, and in the second before he turns towards me, I know that when he does, he will have the sea-green scarf covering the lower half of his face, just below the bulbous nose, the large and watery eyes. He turns without movement, swivelling as he sits. The watery eyes stare at me. He doesn’t pull down the sea-green scarf or move any part of his face but he speaks nonetheless. I hear him quite distinctly. His tone of voice is soft, mocking, almost – but not quite – as if he pities me. I have never felt so cold.

‘You think it will all end, don’t you?’ he says, and his voice is leaden with pain. ‘You think it will all be over, forgotten, but there’s no forgetting for the likes of you or me.’