Now Michael sat alone, saying nothing to the child beside him. He passed him a segment of tangerine, and the silence went on. James wasn’t coming to school today, perhaps: he was ill, and would miss period three, with Mr Trace. James was his own age now, if he was alive – which he should be. You shouldn’t die at fifty-six, after all, unless you were unlucky. No James, and the whole platform was suddenly empty. A few people waited on the one opposite, though. A woman looked up and thought, That kind man is supporting a child who appears to be in distress. It’s a moment of connection.

‘Why did he do it?’ said the boy quietly. ‘It was horrible.’

He looked at Michael, and Michael saw the tears in his own eyes – for the station lights were coming on, and the winter was always bitterly cold.

‘He’s dead now.’

‘So what?’

‘So it’s over. He won’t ever do it again, and we must pity him. We’ll feel better, perhaps, if we pity him. There’s no going back, is there?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, we have to go forward. We have to forget, and move forward.’

‘How, Michael? I want to go back.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s like anything and everything. The pain goes away, and we can be stronger. We’re survivors, aren’t we? Remember the good times! Remember that afternoon, in the Scouts. You and James, on the ferry – me and James…’

‘Where was Luke?’

‘Not there.’

Michael smiled, and his young self leaned against him, so Michael hugged the child harder, getting both arms tight around his narrow shoulders. That was the way to make him invisible, and there were just five pieces of orange left. They were blurred as he counted them, and there was another announcement.

‘We’ll be fine,’ he said – and then he said nothing, because he was thinking of Elizabeth.

Had he spoken aloud? His left hand was touching his nose, as if he had a nosebleed – bent forward, staring at the platform floor.

‘But will we?’ said the tiny boy, curled inside his jacket. ‘What if it’s never fine? What if this blights my life, and I’m lost for ever in the woods, and the caverns of despair? What if, despite all the years I’ve had to build things, I end my days alone? Alone in a small flat, where the letters continue to arrive as the invoices did at the council, and opening them becomes unnecessary?’

‘I have missed too many payments.’

‘We have to write to you, because the train now approaching is approaching. We have to tell you we have handed the debt to an approaching agency—’

‘And I appreciate that.’