A small red cardboard box, of the sort they use for chicken nuggets at the really cheap places, cartwheels across the road in the taxi’s wake, making a tiny clatter as it bounces over itself from corner to corner.

A woman in an orange trouser suit, a really orange one, is strolling down the road towards the station and pauses to let the box tumble in front of her feet before smiling at it and strolling on. She is wearing a green T-shirt beneath the orange suit and walks with her feet splayed, confidently, the edges of her jacket flapping, her white hair in a swinging bob, a cigarette between her fingers, hanging down, half smoked and half forgotten, in a gesture that suggests she could take a puff from it any time she wanted and because of that, no longer feels the need.

By the time the taxi and the woman have gone, Caleb has disappeared from view. A nearly-memory has disappeared along with him. What is left uppermost in my thoughts is his pain, and beneath that, another note, a feeling of my own that I can only describe as a kind of exhilaration. I know this feeling is darker, less empathetic. Caleb, don’t leave me here. Something has drawn you here to the station and you can’t go in but I can’t leave. We met at the barrier. Don’t you know how romantic love at a barricade can be? Don’t leave me. Don’t.

*

My Lisa of the lamplight, my only Marlene. He sang that to me on my birthday, in front of everyone, standing on the low table. My own face in the mirror, later that night, eye make-up smeared down my cheek and my gaze thick with self-knowledge – I think that was the moment I knew.

*

After he has gone, my thoughts dance. ‘Caleb …’ I say it to myself, practising doing it low and solemn, as I hover round the front of the station, wondering if there is any chance he will come back. ‘Caleb …’ I deepen my voice as much as I can.

Suddenly, I am so happy. It is all coming back to me, human feeling – oh, that feeling, wanting someone, as pleasing and ambiguous as scratching an itch on a part of your body that is difficult to reach. The sweet pain, the painful sweetness: yearning for someone, missing them. I remember it all now, the piquancy of it. I turn back into the station and into the ticket office. I sneak up behind a woman who is at the end of the short queue in front of the middle window. ‘Caaaay …leb …’ I whisper into her ear and she frowns and moves her head – she heard something, just a flutter of a noise, as fleeting as a fly passing her ear but, weird, it sounded like a human voice. I twirl again. Success!