For a moment there was just the thunder of locomotion: the dreadful otherworldly screech of metal on metal and the rumble of the shaking earth. There was the harsh yellow light and the massive solidity of the train filling my entire world. I was on my knees, a sharp pain jabbing at my ankle, one hand up to shield my face, already seeing myself smeared into mush and meat upon the gleaming tracks. And then I was throwing myself bodily to my left, rolling over sharp stones and discarded sleepers; the noise of the train shaking my senses with such fury that for a moment it seemed as if the whole world was tearing itself into strips.

Then I was tumbling down a little slope, all mud and grimy water, spilled oil and mounded-up rubbish. Dizzy, my world spinning, both hands pressed to my temples, I lay there for a couple of precious seconds, my chest heaving, tucking myself down into the darkness at the edge of the railway track. The train that had almost ploughed through me was still rumbling by so I knew I wasn’t yet being pursued. I put my hands down and felt a sharp pain in my palm as a shard of broken glass punctured my skin. Gingerly, moving as if on autopilot, I dragged myself upright and glanced around. To my left a grassy slope led up to the edge of a shabby field. Up ahead, perhaps a mile or so in the distance, the lights of the next town gave off a little haze of gold and yellow illumination, like the last ashes in a dying hearth. I could see the rear of the train rattling and clunking past me and knew that if I didn’t move I was going to find myself completely exposed. Ignoring the protests in my ankle, the taste of blood at the back of my mouth, I hauled myself upright and scrambled over the tracks and the piles of rubbish to the little muddy rise, desperately trying to keep my feet as I slithered and crawled my way up and over the slick, sodden grass. I made it to the top of the hill just as the rear car chuntered past, hurling myself over a patchy little line of hedge and sprawling down in the soft wet earth of the field. As the echo of the passing train drifted away into the silence of the night, I made out the sound of raised voices coming from the static train at the far side of the tracks. Every light was on and from where I lay, my head inches above the ground, I could see two train guards having an angry confrontation with half a dozen passengers in the nearest carriage. I scanned the length of the train, looking for my companion. I couldn’t see him. Nor could I make out anybody on the track at the bottom of the slope.