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‘You’re not short, though,’ she said, ‘are you?’

Three weeks later she moved in with him. She worked in the day, at the local building society, and he worked on Union Street, six nights a week, so they didn’t see as much of each other as they would have liked. She would come home at six in the evening, half an hour before he had to leave. The moment she walked in, he would start undressing her — the crisp white blouse with the name-badge pinned to it, the knee-length sky-blue skirt. They would have sex just inside the front door, on a bed of autumn leaflets and junk mail. That same year she got pregnant. She wanted an abortion, though. She was only twenty-two, and she’d just got the first decent job of her life. She didn’t want to give it up, not yet. And, after all, she said, they weren’t exactly pressed for time, were they? He told her that he would find it hard to forget about the child — a remark that now seemed ominous, prophetic — but she wouldn’t change her mind and in the end, because he loved her, he agreed.

He peered through the smeared window of the train. Fields flew past. Then a row of houses. Then more fields.

He should never have agreed. No, never. If there had been a child, she wouldn’t have been able to leave so easily. If there had been a child, he wouldn’t have been able to let her go.

‘I don’t feel very well.’

It was Glade who had spoken. Her skin looked chilled and damp, as though a fever had taken hold of her. Cans of Kwench! rolled stupidly across the table, a hollow tinny sound each time they collided. He counted six of them, all empty.

‘You drank the lot?’

She nodded miserably. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

He took her through the automatic door and into the gap between the two carriages. He had to support her, otherwise she would have fallen. He could feel her rib-cage under her T-shirt; the curve of her right breast touched the back of his wrist through the thin fabric. This wasn’t something he could think about. He pushed her into a vacant toilet and closed the door behind her.

Standing by the window, he could hear her vomiting. It sounded like water being emptied out of a bucket. He watched the landscape rushing by with nothing in his mind. At last the door opened and she appeared, her lips a pale mauve, her orange hair matted, sticking to her forehead.

‘Feel better?’

‘A bit.’

He looked past her, into the toilet. She hadn’t flushed it. The stainless-steel bowl was full of frothy orange liquid. It looked no different to the way it would have looked if she’d just poured it out of a can. He stepped past her, pressed the flush button with his foot. The liquid vanished with a vicious roar.

Back in her seat, she started muttering again.

‘Glade?’

Her eyes flicked sideways, but she didn’t stop. The swaying of the train, the rolling of the cans.

‘Glade!’ He reached through the debris and gripped her by the wrist. She stared at his hand with its big chipped nails and its misshapen knuckles, then her eyes shifted to his forearm, which was tattooed with swords and flags and coiled snakes. At last she stared levelly into his eyes.

‘Look out of the window,’ he said.

She did as she was told.

‘What can you see?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, narrowing her eyes. ‘Everything’s kind of … kind of orange …’

‘There’s nothing orange out there.’ He tightened his grip on her wrist. ‘Are you listening to me? There’s no orange there at all.’

‘No?’

‘There’s fields. Green fields.’

‘Fields.’ Her bottom lip quivered.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Despairing, he pushed one hand savagely into his hair. What did he think he was doing? This linking of himself with her, it was, just a fantasy, wishful thinking, as bright and hollow as the cans that were still rolling this way and that across the table.

‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘I really am.’

He leaned forwards, thought for a while.

‘Where the fields are,’ he said, ‘there used to be trees. Can you imagine that?’

She turned to the window, her eyes wide, the lashes dark and wet.

‘That’s how it was,’ he said, ‘all trees. Oak, ash, thorn —’

‘When was that?’

‘Hundreds of years ago. The time of the Romans.’ He looked out. ‘One book I read, it said a squirrel could travel from one end of the country to the other without touching the ground once.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s how it was. Back then.’

‘It must have been nice.’

He turned to her again, and saw that she was crying.

‘Sometimes I see things,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if they’re there or not. Sometimes there are sounds. I don’t know why.’ The tears spilled down her face in fast, thin lines. ‘It’s like the drinks.’ With one trembling hand, she reached for an empty can. ‘I don’t want to drink it, I really don’t. It makes me ill.’

She was crying harder now. He sat opposite her, his hands resting on the table. He didn’t think he could touch her again. His wrist still remembered the weight of her breast. He could feel the place without even looking at it. Like a burn.

‘Glade,’ he said quietly, uselessly.

The crying shook her whole body.

‘Is everything all right?’

A conductor had appeared at Barker’s elbow. He was a man in his sixties, with veins glowing in his nose like tiny purple filaments. Barker saw that he was different to the woman on the tube. He wasn’t the interfering kind. He only wanted to know if he could help.

‘She’s just upset,’ Barker said. ‘She’ll be all right in a minute.’

‘In that case, perhaps I could see your tickets …’

The old man sounded tentative, almost apologetic, and Barker thought he knew why. For most of his life Barker had looked like someone who was travelling without a ticket. And if you asked him for it, he would swear at you. Or threaten you. Or maybe he’d take out a Stanley knife, start slashing seats. He handed the two Super Savers to the old man, who punched holes in them and handed them back.

‘Change at Doncaster,’ the old man said and, touching the peak of his hat, he moved on down the train.

When Barker stepped on to the platform at Hull two hours later, he thought he could smell the North Sea, a mixture of rotting kelp, crab claws, and discharge from the trawlers. A man in a donkey jacket was sweeping the floor of the station, his broom-strokes slow and regular, as if he was trying to hypnotise himself. Two porters stood outside an empty waiting-room, their uniforms ill-fitting, and shiny at the cuffs and elbows. A group of teenagers leaned against the soft-drinks machine, one chewing his thumbnail, another sucking hard on the last half-inch of a cigarette.

Barker took Glade by the arm and led her through the barrier and out towards the exit, following a sign that said TAXIS. As they passed a bank of pay-phones, Glade hung back.

‘I need to make a call,’ she said.

‘Not now,’ Barker said.

She looked at her watch. ‘I should ring the restaurant and tell them I’m not coming in. I should ring the hospital as well …’

‘What hospital?’

‘My father. He’s in hospital.’

Barker shook his head. ‘We haven’t got time.’

‘It won’t take long. I know what they’re going to say, anyway —’

‘So why bother?’ He hauled on her arm, but she was still resisting.

‘I’d like to talk to Charlie, then.’

‘Who’s Charlie?’

‘Charlie,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of yours.’

Barker hesitated, but only for a second. ‘I told you. There’s no time.’ He hauled on her arm again. ‘Maybe later,’ he said, just to keep her quiet.