I turn the corner and there I am. The wine bar is halfway down on the left, The New Place, a name that seemed like a great idea when it first opened. I know this place. I hover in front of it and look through the window. There’s nothing to stop me going in, of course, but I prefer looking in through the window, in the same way that I preferred looking at Andrew through his sliding doors. I’ve been here, several times. I know it.

Is it the kind of place that Andrew goes to? Might I see him in here, if I come along one evening, with Ruth, the two of them huddled together either side of a small round table in one corner, her earnestly expounding her love for him and being driven to distraction by how honest and reasonable he is being? I’m not sure. It’s a bit smart, a bit aspirational. He doesn’t strike me as that sort of young professional – he seems more down-to-earth, more of a local pub man than the swanky wine bar type.

*

Then I see: me on the floor by the bar, on my back, my legs twitching, heels drumming, and Matty beside me, hastily shrugging off a grey parka coat.

As I become still and start to recover consciousness, Matty is folding the parka and lifting my head tenderly with one hand, to push the coat underneath. The people around are staring down at me with moonlike faces and Matty is looking up at them as he kneels by my side and saying, ‘No, thanks, it’s really not necessary.’

I remember the physical sensations I felt as I came round, then, the way the wooden floor beneath me felt spongy, the muscles on my legs aching from top to bottom, my head full of stars.

If I had physical form right now, I would be pressing my palms against the glass as I peered in, seeing my still-living self there on the floor. I would be wailing, run.

*

I always end up back on the station after one of my expeditions. It’s my portal, my bridge from one form of existence to another. Aren’t portals and bridges generally two-way?

One morning, I see Dalmar leaving the DTL office on Platform One, coming off another night shift. He walks through the barriers at a steady pace, slowly and unobtrusively – for a bulky man, he has a knack of never getting in anyone else’s way. As he heads across the concourse, towards the exit, another staff member, a young man called Bob, is on his way in. Bob is very small, with white-blond hair, and has the cheery demeanour of someone who was picked on at school and is always ready to deflect aggression with a joke against himself. He claps his hand on Dalmar’s upper arm and I see Dalmar steeling himself not to flinch.

‘Hey, mate,’ Bob says.