*

I don’t want to do it, but I feel I really ought.

I cross Station Road. I pass through the barriers. I turn right and mount the stairs to the covered walkway.

Thomas Warren is sitting on the metal bench at the end of Platform Seven. He doesn’t turn or look my way as I approach and I think, he can’t see me any more, now I’ve decided what to do. Now I am free, I am already gone.

I look at him for a while. He doesn’t move. His consciousness is trapped here, reliving the moment before his death, again and again. As time turns, all he will do is enter the station, again and again, mount the stairs, cross the walkway, again and again, but there will be no further investigation into him, no love or diligence to set him free. Instead, he is destined to always end up here on Platform Seven knowing only that he is alone, and that he is terribly and deservedly afraid.

His mortal remains won’t fare much better. They will stay in the mortuary at Peterborough City Hospital for a very long time. The inquest will take place in Huntingdon in the New Year and after that the body would normally be released to the family for burial but nobody will claim Thomas Warren. Nobody wants him, even when he’s dead. He will remain in pieces in the fridge in the mortuary for many months to come, until eventually Bina the Mortuary Manager, who thinks about that nice PC from time to time, will contact the hospital chaplain. The chaplain will agree Thomas Warren’s remains need to be disposed of in a suitable and dignified manner and agree to help. He will ask if it’s more suitable if they go for a Catholic burial at St Jude the Apostle or the Pentecostal Church on the Rock and Bina will say, ‘No idea, I don’t even know if he had any faith. He’s white, that’s all. No idea what he was.’ The phone calls will go on for a few months more and eventually Thomas Warren’s mortal self, such as it is, will go to an unmarked grave at St Jude in a ten-minute ceremony that will involve only the priest. While Thomas Warren sits on Platform Seven, contemplating what he is about to do, again and again, his body will spend its final months before burial as an inconvenience that takes up too much room in a fridge.

I turn away from him, back towards the stairs, leaving Thomas Warren on the bench and leaving Platform Seven for the last time.

*

I go over to Platform Three. If I get the 22.39, I’ll have to change at Stevenage but that’s okay, it’s about a half-hour wait but only another eleven minutes from there.