I watch him for a while. He is quite still, on the bench, facing the tracks. He has a black wool hat pulled down over his ears and a sea-green scarf around the lower half of his face. His shoulders are raised, hands jammed into his pockets so that his elbows make two bulky angles either side of him. It isn’t always obvious, you know. You would think, with my superior perspective, that I could spot them a mile off. Not necessarily – railway stations attract all sorts. Along with hospital waiting rooms and dole offices, they are one of the few places a person can sit for hours and not be asked to move on. Everyone is waiting for something in a place like this: the something comes, the something goes – the ebb and flow of it, why would anyone notice a solitary person on a bench? Sometimes they have a bag at their feet; sometimes they are playing on their phone. The fact that this one has neither bag nor phone makes me feel pretty certain what he is about.

Even when I move in front of him, I can hardly see his face, just the portion of it visible between the top of the scarf and the bottom of the hat. He has a bulbous, large-pored nose and a watery gaze. He is looking straight ahead, expressionless – but what looks like distress or distraction might be just a physical response to the cold. I watch him for a few minutes. There is no change in his demeanour. His stare is quite glassy – that’s how I know for sure, and it’s a feeling like lead, this knowledge.

I glance around. Tom and Dalmar will notice him, or maybe one of the cleaners. Now I have realised what he is, he sticks out like a sore thumb, for me.

But this one is clever, strategic. He has chosen Platform Seven. There’s no cafe on that platform – the snack cart won’t arrive in the waiting room for another two hours and anyway the bench he has chosen is hidden by the solid side of the waiting-room wall. I wonder if he knows this, if he did his research, maybe made a reconnaissance trip. Platform Seven yawns empty. The council houses that face it, across the waste ground and the junkyard, are curtained and dark. Next to them is the giant yard of the Used Car Supermarket but the grilles are down on the warehouse – it’s the middle of the night. No one is around; no one has any reason to see him. This cold bench, this platform, they are just for him. He isn’t the first person to think that.