Stop thinking, Nevis, you are wasting time! Just move. Shouting a thanks to Farok, she feels her limbs breaking into a run, the soles of her feet thudding onto the pavement, propelling her past the toll buildings towards the tower and, reaching it, into the cool darkness beneath and then out again onto the span of the bridge. There, just beyond the first tower with her back to Nevis, she sees a figure standing in the moonlight. Too tall to be Satnam. The woman is unaware of her presence and there is no one else to be seen. Could this be Sondra? Does Sondra even exist? Her belly pulses, stomach churns. What if this whole thing is some kind of sick joke, or a scam? She’d been scammed before, more than once. Satnam says it’s because she’s not very worldly for which Nevis reads, not very good at reading people. To Nevis human hearts and minds are like jewels sitting in a locked box for which she has no key. She knows they’re there. If she picks up the box and shakes it, she can hear shuffling and the sound of soft cries and laughter whose origins she will never understand.

She shouts: ‘Hello?’

The figure on the bridge wheels about and shouts back.

‘Are you Nevis?’

‘Yes.’

The woman beckons her with frantic hands. Nevis takes a step forward then two and in a few moments she has caught up to her.

‘Look,’ Sondra says, pointing a few metres ahead, to where Satnam stands, spectral in the moonlight, on the edge of the bridge where the fence meets the suspension rail, facing the abyss and unprotected by the fence. There’s a gap in the barrier here. At any moment Satnam could squeeze through it and step out into the air.

Never in her life has Nevis seen anyone more lonely.

‘Just talk to her,’ Sondra whispers, but how? She thinks, I’m no good at talking, there’s a wire loose. Some connection between mouth and mind is broken in me. The fear is choking. The terror of getting it wrong, of saying the one thing that sends Satnam over the edge. She can feel the ribs rattling in her chest.

‘Speak! Tell her you love her,’ says Sondra. And so she does, faltering at first and then finding her voice all of a sudden, crying, ‘Satnam, it’s me!’

It’s as if a great wave has rushed to the shore and caught her unawares. How did I not see this coming?

Satnam’s face whips round. In the moonlight Nevis can just make out the faint gleam of her teeth. Is she speaking? What is she saying? The wind is taking away her words. Once more Nevis calls her friend’s name, then gathering herself she advances a step.

‘Stay back!’