When he heard the couple in the penthouse through their open window, he felt himself drop through the building. All the lives in the storeys below him.

Felt the memory, out there at the pipeline, that he hoped would blur the dream, the thoughts of her, begin to break up, then the doctor’s words blow it once more to fragments.

The deep river of the crowd marching below.

Felt suddenly the building itself would sunder.

That only he held it safe.

And he wanted to jump. To step off its edge.

Did not. Because, as now, he feared there would be no ground to hit.

Could think only of the rush of the air.

~

And the shudder, that comes into the rails, brings all this back to Branner. As they make before thunder, the pheasant call. Before that first detonation. His face, an image pitted in the reflection off the solar sleeper as he puts his hand out to the track.

The drumming of the heavy rain. Hits his hood. Hits hood. Pools beside the track in the shallows in the ground. Runs amongst the rails and clinker, bubbling into welts. Urgent ruptures in the bank.

The water bright as molten metal.

The great machines that worked along the route to cut and smelt the pipe. To re-cast the iron as rails.

To change its purpose from a structure of containment, to instruments of guidance.

How her hand tightened. His grip tensing on the scanner, grown slippery with wet.

The distraught footings; how the light had bounced that day.

‘You need to speed it up, John.’ Sergeant through the comms.

Counts his steps between them. Uses them, to help himself proceed. A mechanism of duty. Help himself go on.

Hit hood. Pit pat. Focus on the dot.

What of the train, and everything it is, if the track is ripped away?

Wet metal smell and stone.

The dryness up on that rooftop, the heat reflected as if it came up off the stones.

Those first weeks, together. Lying on the beach. ‘Join the police,’ she’d asked him. ‘Please don’t be a soldier.’

Smell of earth now. Kicked-up leaves. A plump grub displaced from the leaf litter as Branner skids down from the track. A grotesque. Visitation.

Focus, Branner, focus.

The insects hung in ghosts above the line.

Stop thinking of her face.

As if from space, the sergeant’s voice, ‘Can you make this?’ through the bubble.

Yes. He says he can.

‘Just leave it, Branner. Stay clear. It’ll be another dog.’

~

The rain hits with the rhythm of train wheels. Hits hood. Hit his hood. Pushes Branner into his brain. His scar catching faintly on the soft pile of the coat with every movement of his head.

You asked. You made this happen. By preferring she died first.

The long-downed brash at the edge of the track tangled now in new-come growth. Rain steaming on the warmer soil.