When the door closes, he rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, not seeing the cracked whorls of textured paint.

Every time he hears the clanging of the bell from the station closing the crossing, or any announcement about trains, he thinks he might start screaming and never stop.

His breathing begins to quicken now and he makes himself sit up and glug down a sip of the hot tea, painfully scalding his tongue. His hands are trembling. He shakes all the time now. Maybe it’s that thing soldiers get? PTSD?

Their small village had been filled with investigating Transport Police that night, according to his mother, who kept talking about ‘that poor, poor woman’ and being woken by blue lights and sirens.

But by the time Liam had got home in the morning, shaking, pale and sick from drinking half a bottle of brandy in Anastasia’s room, you wouldn’t have known what had happened on those tracks.

He can’t forget though. If only he could ‘un-see’ it, just for a little while.

It’s like the whole evening is on a constant loop in his brain.

One of his old school friends had been having a party. He lived in a big fuck-off house in Landbeach, a village that was walkable from Liam’s house. He’d made the mistake of telling Anastasia that it was near his home and she had gone on and on about seeing where he lived, and cracking jokes about wanting to see his bedroom and all his childhood teddies and posters.

He refused, of course. The thought of Mum’s over-polite awkwardness made him squirm. It would be like having a visit from Gwyneth bloody Paltrow or a member of the royal family. He imagined Anastasia being presented with a doilied-up plate of biscuits, or secretly taking a photo of their downstairs loo and its knitted crinoline lady toilet roll holder. No way was he having that.

The plan was that she would meet him at the station and they would drink in the local pub before walking to the party.

But the evening had gone badly. She had been in a strange mood in the pub and they had ended up going to the party too early.

It wasn’t his sort of do either, but it was hers, as it turned out. Clearly his friend Matt had changed since he had last seen him. It was all City twats who talked in baying voices and thought they were so edgy because there was coke. Liam stuck to alcohol – there was plenty of that – but Anastasia was in the mood to party now she was here, evidently. She seemed to come back to him then and they went out onto the terrace at the back of the house for some fresh air. It was still early; they had only been there for an hour.