‘OK, OK,’ the tired woman replies, holding up her hands as if in surrender. ‘But talk to me!’ She has no idea what she is going to say but she knows that she must find a way to connect. The tiredness has drained from her. Her mind is razor sharp. If I let this happen, she thinks, what will I tell my kids? How will I live knowing I have let a woman die?

She wonders how the young woman can think of leaving this city that she loves so much, this wonderful, stone city with its dark history, its independent, almost feral people and its brilliant, hopeful bridge? She wonders if the young woman knows that this bridge was first conceived of by a woman with six children who drew up the plans and gave them to a man and refused to take any credit because women ‘shouldn’t be boastful’. Women are always building bridges, linking things, people, moving between worlds not made for them, always thinking up new ways to reach across the darkness, to connect.

She wants to ask the young woman why she is doing this, how can anything be this bad, but she knows enough not to. Instead she shouts out, ‘I’m Sondra, what’s your name?’

The young woman turns her head. ‘Satnam.’

‘We’ve all felt like you’re feeling now, Satnam,’ the tired woman says. ‘I’m older than you, so I know. But the feeling passes. It always passes.’ They are more than strangers to each other now. Each has made her way indelibly into the other’s experience, their history, the story of their lives.

Satnam shakes her head. ‘I can’t, I just can’t.’

Her words are slurred. She’s not in her right mind, Sondra thinks. ‘Please, Satnam, come down from the fence. If we stand here any longer, we’ll both be wet through. I live just the other side of the bridge. We can go and have a cup of tea. I’ve got chocolate chip Hobnobs! We can talk.’

Sondra reaches for her mobile phone to call the emergency services but, guessing at her purpose, Satnam shouts, ‘No, no police!’

‘OK,’ Sondra says. ‘No police. But let me call the Samaritans. You don’t have to speak to them. You can just let me do the talking.’ She’d love to call the Samaritans right now. They would know what to do and the tired woman has absolutely no idea.