Liam finally came to his senses and physically dragged Anastasia away from the edge of the platform.

The woman backed away too, muttering to herself in anger and fumbling with a mobile phone she had pulled from her pocket.

‘Please, calm down a bit!’ he said.

Then everything happened so quickly.

They were standing apart from each other. The train was just visible in the distance.

Anastasia gave a sort of high-pitched scream and hurled herself towards the other woman.

And then there were only two of them on the platform. Anastasia had her hands to her cheeks and was peering over into the tracks.

‘Shit!’ she yelled. ‘She’s not moving! I didn’t mean, I didn’t think …’

‘What the fuck!’ He ran over and saw the woman lying at an awkward angle below, her head on one of the rails. She was unconscious.

‘We have to get her up!’ he yelled and Anastasia was pulling at his arm and screaming that it was too late.

The worst part, the part he wouldn’t ever be able to get past, was that he wanted to be as far away as possible from the horror that was about to unfold. So he let Anastasia drag him along the platform and out of sight on the other side of the waiting room as the train came thundering into the station.

Then, the dreadful screaming of the train’s brakes that seemed to go on and on.

Liam swipes at his eyes, remembering this now.

Anastasia had been crying hysterically as they ran down the road from the station. He was cocooned in shock, a welcome fleeciness that lasted only as long as the first flood of adrenaline.

‘I didn’t mean that to happen!’ she kept crying over and over again. ‘I just felt so angry with you and with her.’

And then, as they reached the main road, finally he had turned to her. For the first time in his life, Liam had wanted to hit a girl.

‘You’re blaming her?’ He actually had to clench his fists. He saw his own spit fly from his mouth and Anastasia flinched as it hit her face. But he didn’t care.

‘I’m not blaming her! I’m just trying to explain!’

The rest of that night was a blur. Anastasia paid for a taxi all the way back to her room, where they had drunk brandy and cried and gone over everything time and time again.

All Liam could do since was imagine what that train would have done to the woman – Alice Adebayo was her name, he now knew because it was in the local paper.