He came out of that and steadied himself. He saw a new hopeful direction, walked the back gardens down by the railway, walked beside every train coming into every station. He felt the flow of people in and out of London. He heard on his own personal soundtrack a speeded-up version of one of those pieces of Fifties ‘bustling people’ music.

He felt for the pain and the cold and called for the patterns to form inside his eyes again. He breathed in the right way and found the fireworks starting to go off. It was like being able to see his own brain working. The lights wanted to form their pit again, but this time he wouldn’t let them. He made them form in front of him, made the lights into a tunnel he could walk into. He felt his real body walking too, distantly, not dancing any more, but outside, somewhere cold.

The tunnel that had formed inside his eyes matched, actually, with a tunnel in London that his body was walking into, a railway tunnel.

He looked down. His bare feet were on gravel. Beside them was a rail. The rail was vibrating with the rotary pulse he could also feel from London behind him. He looked up from it. There were golden lights ahead, reflecting on the silver of the rail.

He was afraid.

Good.

He pushed reality, which was trying to assert itself, back down inside himself again. He just had to step forward. Although there was a roaring up ahead. Although it was roaring directly at him now to get out of the way.

He had to believe there was more to himself and the universe than what was being roared at him. Jimmy Quill had taken the longest journey for what he stood for. Sefton had to do the same.

He stepped into the tunnel and marched quickly towards the light that was coming much more quickly towards him. There was, indeed, light at the end of the tunnel.

All the signifiers he’d seen came together for him, and he was sure he was on the cusp of understanding everything about the universe and his place within it.

That was when the train hit him.

*   *   *

‘No, stop, all right, got you.’

Sefton looked around as hands grabbed him and pulled him aside. For a terrible moment he thought he must be awake on the dance floor, having been dragged back to life. For another awful second he was certain he could feel a train rushing past him, feel the air pummelling him, close to his clothes.