Some Bright

'Each storm that passed was greater than the last until came the next which rocked us less.'

Throughout the morning I'd read of the dead guy or rather of those who had known him or seen him in his final hours. There was little to say of him now.

On the 13.45 out of London Paddington a family of four remembered a smell pervading their coach, infecting packed lunches lovingly put together by the children themselves: cheese sandwiches with large chunks of tomato whose juice soaked through the bread so that clumps stuck to their fingers, bags of square crisps from a multipack and bottles of supermarket brand water.

The smell was also noted by the guard passing through, tapping earphoned commuters into producing documentation. He nudged the dead guy on the lapels of his overcoat and the guy produced his ticket from a bundle of business cards.

In a greasy spoon in Swindon the owner presented a plate of scrambled eggs to the guy who responded with a broad smile. When he delivered a second plate the response involved a mumbled sentence, possibly: "That will do it".

The final person known to see the guy alive sold him a copy of the Swindon Advertiser and was told to keep the change. The police were baffled by this last exchange. They puzzled over why a guy who an hour later would put himself on the railway tracks would need a newspaper. This made no sense to them. They scoured the edition for anything that might act as a catalyst for such a decision but nothing showed up and they concluded that the decision had already been made.

When a guy's decided he has no future why take interest in the news? The shopkeeper suggested to an enthusiastic young journalist that the newspaper didn't contain the future, it contained the past. The shopkeeper's husband asked whether the guy didn't already have a past.