At first he ignored it. How could you feel a noise? Walking on, he realized that he hadn’t breathed for about six or seven seconds and corrected the oversight with a cloud of vapour. He struggled to free his body from that atavistic state of standby every child adopts in the darkened bedroom when they hear a creak from a floorboard; breath held, eyes wide open, body still and ready to flee. But why was he on red alert? There was nothing to fear in this situation, except the diminishing drinking time in Stoke, and the wrath of Mary, who even now would be soaking in a bath reeking of something made from coconut or peach.

He felt it again. It was above him, he was sure of that. Something stirring in the rock above the ceiling. But no, that wasn’t right. It was the rock in the ceiling itself that was stirring, moving above him like iron filings attracted to his magnet.

Joshua wanted to run then. He wanted to run very badly indeed. But from what? There was no sound, for God’s sake, nothing to hear but the train. If he gave in to his instincts, how would he explain to Barney or the conductor why he ran flailing along the track, stumbling into the sunlight like a fool? He kept that picture close as he walked more quickly towards the tunnel mouth, making himself visualize Barney’s face as he described how a sound ‘felt’.

‘You bin drinkin’ meths?’ he would say for sure. Barney’s favourite joke. A joke he used on anything he didn’t agree with, understand or like.

(Union official tells him there’s an overtime ban.

‘You bin’ drinkin’ meths?’

Wife tells him it’s time he got up off his fat fanny and put the trash out …

‘You bin drinkin’ meths?’)

You see Barney, you couldn’t hear it exactly, you could only feel it …

‘You bin drinkin’ …’

Enough. He would walk on like an adult and fix that fucking car. The sooner it was done, the sooner he’d be downing a cold one in The Deerbrush, with Mary perched beside him on a stool. He was only three cars away from the sun, and whatever else his heart was saying, his head was saying there is no noise. He had looked back then and been surprised by how far away the lights of the cab seemed.

All the way back into the tunnel Barney would be standing looking at the kettle with his hands in his pocket. All the way back there the conductor would be fishing down the back of his chair for his dog-eared novel. All the way back there the rock was still living. Joshua stopped breathing again and stood still. The noise, the feeling, halted with him. He waited. It waited. Then, it happened.