For a moment Reggie was confused, Mum had been dead for over a year so it seemed a little late to be telling her about it now. Her brain was fudge. She had come in from the train crash, soaked to the skin and covered in mud and filth and blood. The man's blood. She had stripped off and endured an eternity beneath Ms MacDonald's lukewarm shower before putting on her lavender fleece dressing gown which smelt slightly unpleasant and had stains where Ms MacDonald's night-time Horlicks had dribbled down the front. There had still been sirens wailing outside and the sound of helicopters put-puttering in the sky.

They had taken the man away in a helicopter. Reggie had watched it lift offfrom a field on the other side of the track. 'You did well,' the paramedic said to her. 'You gave him a chance.'

'She's not my mother,' Reggie said to the older policeman.

'Where is your mother, hen?' he asked, looking concerned.

'I'm sixteen,' Reggie said. 'I'm not a child, I just look young for my age. I can't help it.' Both policemen studied her doubtfully, even the handsome Asian one who looked like a sixth-former. 'I can show you my ID, if you want. And my mother's dead already,' Reggie said. 'Everybody's dead.'

'Not everybody,' the Asian guy said, as if he was correcting misinformation rather than being kind. Reggie frowned at him. She wished she wasn't wearing Ms MacDonald's grotty dressing gown. She didn't want him to think she dressed like that out of choice.

'We're not releasing these details to the press yet,' the middle-aged policeman said. He looked familiar, Reggie had a feeling he had once come to the flat looking for Billy.

'Right,' Reggie said, trying to concentrate on what he was saying. She was so tired, down to the bone.

'We're not quite sure what happened,' he said. 'We think Mrs MacDonald must have driven off the road and fallen down on to the track somehow. You don't know if she had been feeling at all depressed lately?'

'Mzzz MacDonald,' Reggie corrected him on Ms MacDonald's behalf. 'You think she killed herself?' Reggie was prepared to give this idea consideration -Ms MacDonald was dying after all and might have decided to go quickly rather than slowly -until she remembered Banjo. She would never leave the dog on his own. IfMs MacDonald were going to commit suicide by driving off a bridge and landing in front of an express train she would have taken Banjo with her, sitting up in the front of the Saxo like a mascot.

'Nah,' Reggie said, 'Ms MacDonald was just a rubbish driver.' She didn't add that Ms MacDonald was Rapture Ready, that she embraced the end of all things and was expecting to live eternally in a place that when she described it sounded a bit like Scarborough.

Reggie imagined Ms MacDonald nodding serenely at the 125 express train that was charging towards her, saying, 'That'll be God's will then.' Or was she astonished, did she consult her watch to check if the train was on time, did she say, 'Not already, surely?' One second there, the next gone. It was a funny old world.

Ofcourse, alternatively, she might have been out of her mind with panic when she realized she was stuck with the instrument of her death bearing down on her at over a hundred miles an hour, too confused in the moment to do anything as sensible as get out of the car and run for her life. But Reggie would rather not think about that scenario.

'Plus she had a brain tumour,' she added, trying not to catch the eye of the Asian policeman in case she embarrassed herself by blushing. 'I mean it might just have, I dunno, exploded.'

'We need someone to identity her,' Sergeant Wiseman said. 'Do you think you can do it?'

'Now?'

'Tomorrow will do.'

And now it was tomorrow.

'We will bring you more news as we have it,' the newsreader said, staring seriously at the camera. The programme cut to his copresenter, whose smile was only slightly tempered by the proximity of disaster. 'Now,' she said, 'we're delighted to welcome to the studio the newest resident of Albert Square, already making waves in EastEnders with her-' Reggie switched the television off.

She noticed how still the air in the house was, as if someone had breathed out and not breathed in again. Reggie looked closely at Banjo. His eyes were rheumy slits and his tongue was lolling out of the side ofhis mouth. No movement in his ancient little lungs. Dead. Here one second, gone the next. The breath was the thing. It was everything. Breathing was the difference between alive and dead. She had breathed life into a man, should she try and do the same with a dog? But no, really, if he had been a person he would have had 'Do Not Resuscitate' written on a piece of paper inside the tiny barrel that hung from his collar. Some people left early (a lot of people closely related to Reggie), but some people (and dogs) went when they were supposed to.

A great bubble of something like laughter but that she knew was grief rose up in Reggie's chest. She'd had the same reaction when she was told about Mum's death -in a phone call from Sue (minus Carl) from Warrington because Gary was 'too choked' to talk. 'Sorry, love,' Sue said, in a voice husky from fags. She sounded like she meant it, sounded like she cared more about Mum after a couple of days' acquaintance than her sister Linda did after a whole childhood together.

Reggie wished she had a sister, someone else who had known and loved Mum so that she wasn't all alone keeping her memory alive. There were Mary, Trish and Jean, but in the last year they had moved on, making Mum into a sad memory, no longer a real person. Billy was no good, Billy only cared about Billy. When Reggie died that would be the end of Mum. And when Reggie died that would be the end of Reggie, of course. Reggie wanted a dozen kids so that when she was gone they could all get together and talk about her (Do you remember when . .. ?) and not one of them would feel they'd been left alone in the world.

Reggie had asked Dr Hunter if she wanted more children, a brother or a sister for the baby, and she made a funny face and said, 'Another baby?' as if that was an outlandish idea. And Reggie could see her point. This baby was everything, he was emperor of the world, he was the world.

Reggie visited Mum's grave every week and talked to her and then on the way home from this pilgrimage she stopped in at the Catholic church and lit a candle for her. Reggie didn't believe in any ofthat hocus-pocus, but she believed in keeping the dead alive. There would be more candles to light now.

She knew it was wrong but Reggie felt more affected by the dog's death than she did by his owner's. Reggie stroked Banjo's ears and closed his dim eyes. The dead guy, the soldier, last night had his eyes half-open but Reggie hadn't closed them. There'd been no time for such niceties. The Asian policeman was wrong, everybody was dead. It was like being cursed. It was like being in some horror movie. Carrie. All those people on the train, perhaps they should be on her conscience as well. 'Troubled teen or angel of death?' she said to the dead dog. 'You have to wonder.' Was the man dead too? Perhaps instead of saving him she had killed him, simply by being near to him. Not the breath of life but the kiss of death.

He was the second man she'd come across after half sliding, half falling down the muddy embankment. The first one was the soldier. Reggie shone her torch on him and moved on. She expected there would be plenty of time later to think about how he looked dead. The torchbeam was thin and wavery. Thigh high, not eye high. Mum had once worked as an usherette at the Dominion but was sacked after two weeks for eating ice-creams without paying for them.

The second man had a pulse, pretty weak, but a pulse was a pulse. His arm was a mess, he was bleeding from an artery and, in the absence of anything else, Reggie took off her jacket, rolled up a sleeve and used it as a pad to press on to the bleeding arm the way that Dr Hunter had shown her. Reggie tried calling out for help but they were down in a dip where no one could see or hear them. The first sirens had begun to wail in the distance.