Melissa and I watch him go. Normally, Lockhart has an easy, loose way of walking, the walk of a young man who is comfortable in his skin, who still believes in duty and justice – it’s hard to imagine him ever being a cynical sergeant or inspector: he’s one of these young men who looks as though he will never be middle-aged. But today, he trudges back along Seven – trudge is the only verb for it. It has, indeed, been a very long night.

*

Leyla. It’s a name that comes to me, just at that moment, as I look at young PC Lockhart walking away.

I see something, an image in my thoughts. It is a picture of a woman in her seventies sitting on the edge of a bed. She is facing away, towards a window where a rectangle of grey light casts a pale glow in front of her. She is dressed in a nightie. She’s cold.

Is she Leyla?

*

Melissa stays on Platform Seven for a few minutes after Lockhart has gone, looking down at the tracks. When she goes back to her office on Platform One, she will have to get on with her day – she is often running around the station or off to meetings elsewhere on the Network. All that is still there, along with all the follow-up this will cause, the interviews with staff, the emails to Head Office, the report to be done. She shouldn’t just be standing here like a prune, especially not when members of the travelling public can see her. But part of her feels unwilling to go back to her office and get on with the rush of it all. She needs to take a moment or two, to apologise in her head to the man, for her own annoyance at his act, her impatience. It seems only right.

*

Melissa turns briskly on her heel – the opposite way to Lockhart, to go back to her office via the access ramp. I stay on Platform Seven.

I think I know what is going on with me: the man’s death is reminding me of me. Perhaps that is my route back in, to my life, I mean, to who or what I was before I died. The death of the man has unlocked something.

I think about his face. I was so close to it, staring into those large, watery eyes. I think about how opaque his thoughts were. Normally, I can tell what people are thinking and feeling but with him, a shutter was down when I looked at him. I think about the cold sensation I felt when he passed through me, so chilling it felt like scorn, and I know for certain that whatever Melissa has just told Lockhart, I didn’t do what he did. I didn’t throw myself off Platform Seven.

So what happened to me?

*