Oh, he could see the two of them still, in beret and scarf – and James was a better athlete than eleven-year-old Michael. He could see James the day they’d worked a little ferry together – that was some Scouting nonsense, no doubt – hauling on a rope to drag the craft across the pond, so they’d both been soaked but only James had taken his shirt off and carried on bare-backed, and extra specially splendid, for you couldn’t be aware of your beauty then; the word had no currency and he had no idea why he found himself ejaculating that night as something visited his dream and left him damp, sticky, shamed and more scared than he’d ever been – with nobody to talk to but Mr Trace, who wanted to see him again about his low mark in a recent test.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to pay.’

If he was homosexual, he needed to embrace it. It wasn’t a criminal offence any more: one was allowed to be gay. It was encouraged, for gender meant nothing, the pronouns only revealing how narrow-minded and repressed some people were. There were so many partners out there, and rights to be claimed – there were attitudes to be challenged, too. If he could find James again, they could recall that time on the ferry together, and he could explain that no, he wasn’t homosexual – or, if he was, he had so successfully deceived himself that he might as well not be. What was he, then? How had he evolved or faded or fallen into this?

‘Does it matter?’ James might say, holding both his hands.

No. Not at all.

It just didn’t, because take any soul from any of Preston’s long, dark platforms, and they would all have similar irrelevant predictable stories, and silly anxieties about their silly childhoods. They would all end up the same: neatly boxed in the back of a hearse, queuing for the crematorium – and once you’d noticed one of them, they seemed to be everywhere. You couldn’t go two miles without a sign reminding you that this town had a crematorium too, and it was closer than you thought, and what you were breathing probably contained a speck or two of somebody – not that it mattered. If he could only stop, then no one would have to listen any more – he wouldn’t have to listen to himself. The self-, self-, self-pity, like morning mist, would evaporate as soon as the sun came up.

‘You were never clever enough,’ he said, aloud. ‘Too stupid.’