Who was I kidding, thinking that Pierce would go ahead with the interview? He’d be home already, deciding obscurity was better than infamy, or on the phone to the Sunday Times. I’d be left with nothing, or an angle piece about how I almost had the story but let it slip away – which would probably have to involve coming clean about my own problem, if I did it at all.

What was wrong with this fucking train? It was serious, evidently – either that, or the heaters were on the blink, as an acrid smell was filling the air, beginning in the pocket of membranes at the back of my mouth. I rocked in my seat, and craned up again to see if I could detect any panic among my fellow passengers. No obvious alarm. One young woman was hissing a lengthy complaint about the situation into her mobile phone, but the others gazed without focus and did not frown or sniff as toxins misted the air.

‘I’ve got to get out,’ I said, gathering my things into my bag. There was no way off, of course, the carriages were sealed tight, air thickening and fouling, vents coughing fumes, but on a superstitious level I thought I might be able to jog the train into movement by acting as if arrival in the station was imminent. Also I simply had to move – to stay still was to be stifled, to invite paralysis and collapse.

My legs dissented under me. I found myself swaying against seats, attracting wary glances, being assessed for drunkenness, criminality and mental illness. Yes, yes, I’m sorry. No. I fear so. Again the speakers of the PA system clicked and crackled, but no words came over. The train did move, it shuddered again like a great beast dying but instead of dying it lived and moved. I looked through the window, seeking a familiar landmark to orient myself, only to see my own reflection, low-res in the smeared, scratched glass, eyes dark pits. I squinted and focused as the train gathered speed, and saw a line of white lights or reflectors beside the track. Except they were not reflectors or lights. They were birds, lined up on a wire fence, watching the train. Cockatoos, white cockatoos, not watching the train, watching me. They knew me.

At Fenchurch Street I had to physically shoulder through a crowd of irate City types, and one of them called me a ‘fucking cunt’, and I sincerely hoped they all got trapped together on a stinking train. Gulping the damp, cold air in a brick arch outside the station, surrounded by hunched and angry private misery, I realised that the District Line would be as bad or worse. I just couldn’t face it. So I looked for a pub.

SIX