I am going to find my mother. I am going to Welwyn Garden City to be with her. I am going to make her feel that just as she is threaded through me, I am through her. The picture of the woman I kept seeing was never my future self: it was always her. And I will be there when she wakes up tomorrow morning and sits carefully on the edge of her bed and reaches out a hand for the framed photograph she still keeps by her side.

The train pulls in. Unlike the other passengers, I don’t need to wait for the doors to open. There’s no reason why I couldn’t go and sit in First Class but old habits die hard. I choose a half-empty carriage near the back and, glory! I get a table all to myself and I sit down on the window seat, facing front.

The train doors slam. The whistle blows. What beautiful, beautiful sounds. And then, how pleasing and how slow at first, the train begins to pull out of the station, the promise of what is to come building and building in the shuddering beneath us.

As we pass the end of the platform, I look to my left and clearly visible above the British Transport Police building is the multistorey car park. The grey shape is there and I know what it is. It is Matthew, in his hooded parka – or rather, it is his future. I see that future, clear as day, as the train picks up speed. I see that one Saturday morning a year or so from now, he will be returning to his car, which he has parked on Level Six, looking out towards the station. His baby son Jason is in a pushchair and his wife Shelley is holding his stepdaughter Estella’s hand. Estella is nearly five now and has started school. They have just come back from a tiring trudge round Queensgate and she is whining. Baby Jason is curled up on his side and making a kind of low grizzling noise, the one that infants do when nothing is really wrong but they want everyone to know that whatever it is, frankly, they’ve had enough of it.

Outside the multi-storey car park, a grey drizzle falls. Matty and Shelley are arguing and as they reach the car, he grabs her by the lapels of her jacket and shoves her back against the yellow railings, hard against them, bending her back and shouting in her face. Estella, standing next to them, begins to scream.