“What I know is that you fight ghosts with phones.”

“It’s called a terminus,” he said.

The vicar was staring at us from the top of the steps. Though the throwing up had made me a little shaky, every step brought some strength back. Whatever I had expelled, I was glad it was gone.

“Stephen told me he was in a boating accident,” I said. “What happened to you?”

Callum leaned back and stretched out his legs.

“We had just moved here from Manchester. My parents had split up a year before, and we were moving around a lot, house to house. My mum got a job down here, and we moved to Mile End. I was a good footballer. I was on track to go professional. I know a lot of people say things like that, but I really was. I was in training. I’d been scouted. A few more years, they figured, and I’d be up for it. Football was all I had and all I did. No matter where we went, my mum always saw to it that I had my training. So it was December. It was pissing down rain, freezing. The buses weren’t running properly. A kid I went to school with had showed me this shortcut through this estate they were ripping down. You weren’t supposed to go in there. They had fencing all around it and warning signs, but that wasn’t stopping anyone.”

“Estate? Like a mansion?”