He rises from the bench and turns his head a little to the left. He has heard something, in the distance. It is his fate, still far off but thundering towards him: a freight train. Freight trains are terrible things: ferocious, heavy, interminable – when they are going slowly it feels as if they take hours to pass through the station. The front of the train is long gone while its rear still seems miles away in the opposite direction. It’s hard to believe there was ever a driver at the front of it.

The man lumbers forward a metre or so until he is standing close to the edge of the platform, past the ridged rubber they lay down for blind people, past the yellow line. I back up but stay between him and the tracks. We are face to face now. He begins to shuffle his toes centimetre by centimetre, as if he has mobility issues, although I know there is no physical handicap behind the reluctance his body feels to approach the edge. His body knows better than his mind how dreadful this is: it is screaming for him to come to his senses. Why doesn’t he listen? Every fibre is stretching to move back from the abyss.

The man has begun to sway. Still only his eyes are visible and they are large and pale, glistening with tears. Why has no one noticed him yet? I glance around the station, as if it is possible to make my thoughts loud and panicky enough to summon Dalmar or Tom, and as I do, I hear it coming closer – and he does too. I look back at him and he has turned his head, looking to his left up the track, and we both hear the thunder and rumble of the freight train getting nearer and nearer, the sound of it, and we see the two bright yellow circles of its headlights, distant and disembodied, the edges wavery but the centre of them solid, imminent, rushing towards us through the dark.