‘“Sexually abused?”’ said Lepidus, or Cicero – the names had gone but the text was in his head still: Caesar’s Gallic Wars. ‘“Show us a man who has not – nihil – never taken the penis into the mouth. Let him make himself known that we may salute him!”’

‘Good,’ said Mr Trace. ‘It’s not as hard as you thought, is it?’

The boys laughed when he said that.

No, it wasn’t so very, very hard – and Mr Trace was not, thankfully, on this particular train because he was dead, his dust spread wide and ungatherable in a garden of remembrance.

‘Did he cum?’ said someone.

‘What?’

Michael hadn’t known what that meant, the first time.

‘Come where?’

Screams of laughter, and the wonder and the fear. ‘Did he give you something to eat, Michael? Did you get your lunch?’

Everyone knew about Mr Trace, so was everyone to blame? Julius Caesar must have sat in his tent, just like Mr Trace, and in came young Mikilus in his soft leather servant uniform – he’d probably fought for the privilege of fellating the great leader, and perhaps it had even been love? That was how it was back then, before the legislation.

Boys got over it.

Michael slowed down his breathing.

His hands were shaking, so he took the carton from his bag and drank a mouthful of whisky straight from it – then he ate a tangerine. The train was still utterly on time, and would get him into Gloucester soon after noon which was just minutes away, giving him a moment to sweep the peel together and put it in his pocket for disposal in the first litter bin he saw. Nobody was looking at him.

It was this very service that he had picked up all those months ago, travelling in the other direction: he had sat with himself as he was sitting now, looking at himself wanting to be rid of himself. The train had been just like this one, and he’d stepped onto it late one night, to find the vandalised table with its oh-so personal message and the small, polite, helpful Sikh who’d tried to make it go away. He wasn’t fond of Gloucester station, but it was coming towards him now: the slow motion of the braking train. It had long, busy platforms which seemed disconnected and spread out, and the trains came in from every direction. North, south, east and west: you could never be quite sure which way you’d end up going, for there were too many options. To get to Southampton, for example, meant going north first of all, and coming back on yourself. If you missed Cheltenham you’d end up lost in the Midlands, but if you got it more wrong than that you might end up in deepest Wales.