At this time of day, there are half a dozen people ranged beneath the ten monitors that form the display, orange letters against the black screens. People tip their faces upwards and gaze at them for the whole of the time they are standing there, as if they might miss some vital information if they don’t keep looking – a microsecond-long mention of the fact that their train is cancelled, for instance, that will appear only briefly. Their expressions are rapt. I can’t help feeling that Network Rail is missing a trick. Think of the knowledge they could dispense, as opposed to just giving you train times. Watching the people watch the screens I feel the same slight sense of disappointment that I used to feel when I got money from a cashpoint machine and it asked if I required an advice slip. Why did the advice slip tell me how much money I had just taken out of my account? I knew that already. Why didn’t it say: Replace the sitting-room window now before it causes a damp problem or Take an evening class in the history of jazz, you’ll enjoy it or Leave your lover before it’s too late?

Account balance: £278.31. Call that advice?

*

The day passes. There isn’t much of an afternoon rush hour going into Peterborough Station – at this time of the day it flows the other way. As the light fades and evening grows, the commuter trains arrive and disgorge groups of people and through the barriers they come in single-file streams. Half of them are on their phones. Some are bent and frowning, weighed down by the stresses of their day, but quite a few have their faces lifted and their expressions open and relieved. They are nearly home. The barriers are almost always kept open at Peterborough Station: it is a portal. The dividing line between life and the afterlife is porous here. I watch the people and it amazes me that they don’t seem to have realised it yet. I was just like them once but now I feel baffled and irritated that they are all in such a rush. Think about it, I want to say – from my superior perspective – at the moment, you think this is just about going to work and back, but one day you will realise you can pass through at will.

I wonder if there are other portals in all the other countries across the world – perhaps each country, each culture has its own equivalent? Surely it is arrogant to think it only happens here. Maybe not, though, maybe this is the only one in the whole of the known universe. Peterborough Railway Station: the only place you can cross over.