Somehow, I have to work out how Caleb and I can cross the gulf between us, how we can communicate. I know that I am trapped on Peterborough Railway Station for a reason, and he is drawn here but unable to enter for a reason. I can see him and hear him but he can’t see or hear me, doesn’t even know I exist. It’s fair enough to say it’s up to me to make the first move.

*

If only I could follow his story, but as soon as I try to go beyond Station Approach it is as though I meet a transparent barrier. I don’t understand why this should be so – I’m a spirit, shouldn’t I be able to go wherever I want? I can go across to the BTP office building, the small brick house that used to be the stationmaster’s house in the Victorian era, and even enter it, hang around watching the cops eating ginger nuts. I could sit cross-legged on Inspector Barker’s desk all day if I wanted. But I can’t pass the beggar who sits on the other side of the road and I can’t access the bridge that leads to the shopping centre or go down into the underpass. To the left of the station, my world is even more proscribed – I can’t go into the Great Northern Hotel or get anywhere near Waitrose. Funny how alluring a supermarket seems when you haven’t been going into one for ages. A bag of carrots strikes me as quite fascinating – I’d really like to see one again. I’m guessing they’re still orange.

On the other side of the station, beyond Platform Seven, my boundaried world includes the freight depot and sidings. This is the part the general public never sees: the slip road off Thorpe Road that takes a sharp plunge down, the iron gate, the pale grey looming sheds, the disused ones from the Victorian era with the old iron tracks still embedded in the earth, and the Portakabins where drivers take their breaks, wrapping their hands round mugs of tea just like the cops in the BTP offices and the Customer Services staff in the DTL office on Platform One and workers everywhere all over the world. It’s a largely male world, still, a world of men in toe-capped boots and hi-vis vests and hard hats, a world I never saw as a young woman and one I might have found a bit intimidating, but my spirit state belies my gender. I’m a match for any of those men now. It’s a pleasing thought.