Restlessness was mounting in me. The window that De Chauncey had left open was closing, causing a familiar churn of emotion: foreboding, and sickly delight. Even if I had wanted to hare over to Shoreditch and meet the man, the trains were now preventing me. I was obliged to go home and drink, boo hoo. It was perfect, and I started composing an excuse-filled email to the PR, hope that the disruption was severe enough and widespread enough to be news, to get into De Chauncey’s bubble, and keep intact the illusion that I had made every effort to reach him in reasonable time. But there was still that foreboding. Even if he accepted that there were real train problems, it didn’t clear up his schedule, or his disinclination to help me out. That thought needed dousing in lager until it went away. Tomorrow had to be obliterated. That was the only job on my to-do list. And the train was keeping me from that, as well. Every minute I spent sitting in this inert train was another minute I could be safely back home annihilating the future. What had promised to be a long evening of drinking was receding into being a standard-length evening, or even a short evening. My insides crawled with dissatisfaction. Never enough time to waste. At least I would be home all day tomorrow. But, in theory, working – I had promised Eddie. What were the odds of getting a draft done? I needed one, even an ‘unauthorised’ version. I might be able to brazen out the De Chauncey situation if I had something really explosive to show Eddie, even a (carefully edited) transcript. But it didn’t seem likely. Not with all the drinking I had planned.

The train lurched, and stopped again. Its halt had a more permanent quality this time: the engine sound dropped out completely and the lights flickered. I expected an announcement – I wanted an announcement – but none came, and the unresolved possibility poisoned the air. Clicks and pings came from below, components cooling. I thought about the becalmed freight cars in their Dagenham sidings, weeds growing up around their axles. We were probably only metres from a station. A more serious problem? A bomb, gunmen on the loose? I took a look at Twitter and Tamesis again to see if bad news, awful news, was breaking. It wasn’t. But Tamesis knew that something was up. Its real-time experience rating of Fenchurch Street and all other City stations was bad and falling.

On Tamesis, there was another message from Kay: Do you want to meet up? I liked Kay, but this was horrible, horrible, my evening, she was crashing my evening. Which was, in any case, trickling away minute by minute on this fucking train.