Steve had stood up, and Michael imagined him in his fireman’s uniform and how grateful someone would be if he appeared through the flames of his or her burning car. He would yank the door open, and cut the seat belts with a knife. He’d haul you onto his shoulder and out to safety. When you touch the live rail, you stick to it – so people say. If you touch it with the palm of your hand, the voltage makes the muscles contract so you find yourself gripping it. You grip the metal, and all those volts course straight through your body in their rush to earth, flipping you like a puppet. The fillings of your teeth pop out. Your eyeballs turn to liquid and your hair catches fire. The live rail fries you from inside: you actually melt, even as you scorch. Steve had managed to drag someone off, though, with a wooden rake. So Michael sat back, and saw that the woman opposite him had sherbet lemons – he could see the telltale yellow eggs. She caught his eye.

‘I’m going to see Linda,’ said Steve.

I’m going to Crewe, thought Michael. The 14.41 is a through train, and the rails are not electrified. I won’t be electrocuted.

‘Linda?’ he said.

Linda was Michael’s team leader, and she started the inquiry that turned into a search, that mushroomed into an investigation. Michael had lost the invoices, he said – but they knew he hadn’t. He had sat at his desk, unable to see the screen for a fuzz of tears that came from nowhere, and oozed straight back even as he wiped them. When his eyes were dry they were too dry, and he couldn’t concentrate – and the invoices piled up in their folders, deep in the desk drawer to the right of his knees. He had no relationships, but that was hardly Linda’s fault, or Steve’s. His mother was dead, so there was nobody to be proud of his non-achievements, and he had simply run out of fuel. There he was on the hard shoulder with everyone else screaming by, blasting their horns.

‘Why didn’t you ask for help?’ she said at some point, in that kindly voice of victory.

Michael had laughed.

‘I didn’t think I needed it,’ he said – and the woman with the sweets looked up, for he had spoken aloud.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m talking to myself.’

‘Pardon?’

He smiled. ‘I’m getting into bad habits. I’m talking to myself.’