‘Would you like a carrot?’ asked Emily. A cool carrot on a summer’s day. The flashing sun and fizzy citrus and rocking on the tracks, the fever of collapse – what I began to feel as the anger left me was euphoria, and I was careful to avoid looking directly at Emily, worried that my face would show her something that could only be read as love, chaotic love, enough to scare her into getting off the train and returning home.

When we stopped at Warrington fourteen men in nearly identical T-shirts boarded, all carrying an open tin of lager. They formed a line throughout the carriage, looking up and down and trying to work out where to sit. On the front of each of their bright-orange T-shirts it said ‘Baz’s Blackpool Stag Do 2016’, and on the back each man had an individual nickname. From our vantage point we could only make out #dangleballs, #shewassixteenhonest!, #fishyfinger and #lukeskywanker.

‘We seem to be surrounded by digital natives,’ said Emily. ‘I think I need an orange juice and Charlemagne.’

I happily poured her one and we kept our heads down while they mooed at each other. ‘Who’s the fitty sitting down?’ said one of them, and Emily groaned.

‘If I say I’m gay can I feel your tits?’ came another disembodied voice.

‘What does that even mean?’ she whispered to me.

‘Don’t try to understand. We get off in five minutes,’ I said.

We ran to change platforms in Preston and had the gratifying sight of seeing the first of their gang arrive at the doors just as they were shutting.

‘Oh, this is wonderful!’ she said as we pulled away. She blew a kiss to the man who had pounded on the door.

‘Hashtag: victory to the fitty sitting down.’

‘Hashtag: what kind of place have you fucking brought me to?’

‘It’s not like that where we are, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Their bodies would never be found if they drew attention to themselves like that where we’re going.’

‘I like the sound of this place,’ she said.

‘Steady on.’

Emily kept her book in her bag, and I finally felt I could ask her about her engagement. I noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.

She looked down at her left hand. ‘No. God, no. He offered to buy me one but all that money wasted on a pretty “Keep Away” sign, with some gem mined by a modern-day slave in a country torn by civil war? Nah. Anyway, he didn’t propose to me; we proposed to each other.’

‘As it should be.’

‘I don’t know why I’m saying this. It was his idea. I was just very happy about it.’

‘Were you?’

‘I’ve never been happier in my life with someone. I don’t want it to end. It’s nice to know he feels the same way.’

‘So did he get down on one knee?’