My father shrugged, nodded in my direction where I sat at the kitchen table. ‘Oh go on, she knows I’m only joking.’

Does she? I thought to myself, but said nothing.

*

It is nine o’clock that evening. I have long since given up for the day but as chance would have it, I am just turning away from Platform One to head back outside – and there he is, coming straight towards me through the open barriers.

Caleb. Where the hell have you been?

I feel that small blast of shock you get when someone you really want to see shows up unexpectedly – eighty per cent joy and twenty per cent affront. What is he doing on the station at this hour? He isn’t in his working suit this time, he’s wearing jeans, trainers and a grey puffa jacket with a dark red scarf hanging loose round his neck. He looks quite different from our first encounter – he is one of those men transformed when he isn’t wearing his suit. He is moving differently too, with a sense of purpose. Even though I am looking right at his face and recognise him straight away, I have the strange sense that he could be someone else entirely.

And yet I know, immediately, that something is wrong – even more wrong than when he sat and had a cry in the Pumpkin Cafe. His expression is similar to the one he had last week but deeper, more serious, the lines in his face more clearly etched – it isn’t just the way the artificial light falls, I’m sure of that. His face is set. He is hurrying through the barriers as if approaching the station at a normal pace will allow him to baulk. He has decided to barrel on through, like a horse and rider making one last effort at a fence they have stumbled at before. His expression is so rigid that I think, oh no, he really is ill.

Instinctively, I move aside to let him pass. He turns right and heads for the stairs but trips. One knee comes down and almost strikes the step – he saves himself by grabbing at the handrail. It is such an unexpected stumble that he stops dead for a moment, frozen in that position, like a semi-kneeling sculpture, a Michelangelo, or something. There is a man immediately behind him in a large wool coat, also hurrying up the stairs, who has to bring himself up short in order not to crash into Caleb from behind. The man in the wool coat is much bigger and would probably have knocked Caleb forward if he hadn’t managed to stop himself in time – he rolls his eyes as he steps round him. Caleb is an obstacle.