Melissa strides through the barriers towards us, legs scissoring, and turns at the Information desk, leaning over to say something to the staff member there, nodding, turning back. It comes to me that I miss my friend Dalmar. After this, maybe I will go and track him down. I know he’s on nights at the moment and as it’s mid-afternoon, the light is fading, maybe he’s still asleep. Or he might be up by now, eating something that will do a passable impression of breakfast. I hope it isn’t crisps. I feel a need of him, all at once, his goodness and solidity.

‘Hello,’ Melissa says to Lockhart, and he nods in return. ‘They’ve just called,’ she says, ‘they’ll be here any minute. Thanks for popping over.’

‘That’s okay,’ Lockhart says.

‘It’s not that I think we’ll need you or anything,’ Melissa says, ‘it’s just, useful, I don’t know.’

‘It’s okay,’ Lockhart repeats. All the cops at the BTP are used to this: half their job is being visible, standing around, just in case.

Andrew and Ruth step through the sliding doors behind us, look around and see Melissa waiting for them. They come over and shake hands. Melissa introduces them to Lockhart and says, ‘He’s going to walk over with us.’

The group turns and walks through the barriers.

*

On Platform Seven, Andrew and his sister stand next to each other, very close together. Ruth lifts her hand and grasps her brother’s arm as they stare down into the four-foot in their moment of silent homage.

The platform is quiet, no train is due. The light is dull, the sky darkening. Beyond the freight depot and the junkyard, above the row of council housing, the clouds bunch together as if huddling for comfort against the night to come. Dusk is always lurking in wait at this time of year and soon it will begin its inexorable descent.

Andrew is trying and failing to be brave – I can read him now, he is just like any other person on the station. He is thinking that he is an adult and should have an adult’s understanding – perhaps, even, the power of forgiveness. He cannot manage forgiveness, though. Whether that is a fault in him or the very concept of it, he cannot fathom. He only knows that all he can manage is a kind of letting go. It happened. It is in the past.