She turned away from the Samaritans sign and looked out. The tops of birch trees planted down below were at the same height as the road she was on, crows nesting in the branches, cawing loudly, protecting their young.

She stepped on to the bridge and felt the comforting vibrations under her feet. Something she hadn’t really thought about before Logan jumped. She’d been across the bridge plenty of times but never really paid attention. Now, since the jump, her senses were sharpened, every observation acute, every thought poignant or profound. Like those people who had near-death experiences and found a new joy in the mundane nature of life. Except in her case it was the opposite, it had taken the suicide of her son to make her more attuned to the presence of death everywhere.

She placed a hand on the railing and felt the throb of the traffic. When a lorry went past, the road beneath her shook and swayed. It was terrifying and exhilarating. It was a suspension bridge, and only once you were on it did you realise what that meant, that it was suspended from its giant supports, millions of tons of it kept in position by thin steel cables. It swayed in the wind, shook with the traffic. One day it would come crashing down into the water and all this engineering brilliance would be lost.

She strode towards the centre of the bridge. The camber was large, another surprise to her tuned senses the first time up here after Logan. She walked past the SOS Crisis phone for drivers, the first set of CCTV cameras, then the traffic warning signs. She looked out across the expanse of water. North Queensferry huddled into the hillside on the opposite bank, the rail bridge sturdy and implacable over Inch Garvie, then back the way she’d come, her and Ben’s home nestled at the water’s edge between the older flats by the harbour and the new developments closer to the marina.

She stopped and looked up at the cabling, felt dizzy. Closed her eyes and leaned back against the railing, let the tremors overtake her body. She sensed two lorries raging past, her body shaking in unison with them. It felt good to be connected.

She opened her eyes and kept walking towards the middle of the bridge.

As the camber levelled off, she saw a figure up ahead. A teenage boy or a young man, tall and thin, standing where she was heading for, the centre of the bridge. For a moment, a tiny gasp of time, she thought it was Logan.

She took a few more steps then realised the person wasn’t on this side of the railing. He was already over it, standing on the thin metal ledge beyond, holding on to the railing behind his back, looking down at the water.

3

She tried to shout between breaths as she sprinted towards him.

‘Wait.’

Gulping in air.

‘Stop.’

He was fifty yards away, still looking down, rocking backwards and forwards, his elbows bending and straightening as his fingers gripped the grey metal behind his back.

Thirty yards.

‘Hold on,’ Ellie shouted.

The traffic noise was all around her, seeping into her, pervading everything. She didn’t know if he hadn’t heard or was just ignoring her.

Fifteen yards.

‘Stop.’

His body jerked and he turned his head towards her. His face was crumpled and tears were streaming down his cheeks, snot from his nose. He was taller than Logan, maybe a couple of years older, but he had the same hair flick covering his eyes. The breeze blew his hair about, swirling around them both. He wore a blue-and-grey-striped hoodie, jeans, Adidas, standard teenage stuff. Logan had similar clothes in his room right now, washed, put away forever.

‘Logan?’

She didn’t know why she said it. She didn’t even realise it came from her mouth until it was out. She knew it wasn’t him, crazy to even think it.

He looked confused. His breath was catching in his chest from the crying, his body shaking with the bridge as a truck hammered past. Ellie turned and stared at the road. No one would pull over. The drivers probably hadn’t noticed anything, and even if they did it was madness to stop in the middle of a duel carriageway when you were travelling at sixty miles an hour. And anyway, there was no way to get from the road to the footpath of the bridge without climbing across the gap between, where the cables stretched to the top of the support tower. You had a pretty good chance of killing yourself doing that.

She glanced at the CCTV cameras, then looked both ways along the path. No sign of the yellow van. It took five minutes, if they were even watching the monitors.

It was down to her.

‘Don’t do this,’ she said.

He shook his head, then stared at the water past the rail bridge, the firth widening to the sea.

‘No,’ Ellie said. ‘Turn round. Look at me.’

He didn’t turn. He began rocking forward and back, as if geeing himself up for a dive into a swimming pool.

‘Please turn round and talk to me.’

Ellie knew all about this now. She’d spent night after night looking up suicide-prevention techniques online, official strategies on SAMH and Choose Life websites, anecdotal stuff on message boards from people who had tried and failed, as well as people who had been talked out of it. All of it, that mass of loneliness and distress, boiled down to one thing. Get them talking. Engage. Be there, and help them to reconsider.

‘Please,’ she said.

She took three steps closer. He was only a few feet away now, shoulders shaking, legs jittery. He was thin, like Logan, gangly, as if his bones didn’t quite fit together yet. His clothes were too baggy, hanging off him. She stared at his hands on the railing. She prayed for those hands to hold on, as if they were separate from his willpower, his decision making. He had long, thin fingers and slender wrists.

Another step closer. She could almost touch him.

‘My son did this,’ she said. She tried to speak calmly but she wanted to be heard over the rage of the traffic. ‘Six months ago. Don’t do it. You think this is the only way, that you’re never going to feel better, but you’re wrong. We can get help. Think about your mum. Your family.’

His left hand came off the railing. She reached out towards him. He swung round to face her and grabbed hold of the railing again, this time with his back to the water, away from the drop.

She put her hands on his hands. Her spindly little bones dwarfed by his. He was a foot taller than her, around six feet, maybe seventeen years old, close to being a man. Closer than Logan was ever going to get. He had a beautiful face, smudged by tears and confusion. Big brown eyes, some thin stubble across his chin and lip.

Ellie rubbed her hands up and down his on the railing.

‘Come over to this side,’ she said.

His chest was heaving as he tried to get his breath back, tried to compose himself. Ellie knew from all those suicide videos that nothing was predictable, nothing made any sense in the face of this moment. She moved her hands up to his wrists and held on tight. If he went over, she would go too.

‘Please, just come back to me.’

He avoided looking at her, turned to stare both ways along the bridge, then down at his feet. Ellie followed his gaze and felt vertigo, the huge drop a few inches behind him. Seeing what Logan must’ve seen just before he jumped. It took real bottle, that’s what she’d come to understand. Her son had a lot of guts. This wasn’t a coward’s way out, this wasn’t pills or wrists or whatever. This was brave and strong and she was perversely proud to have produced such an independent human being from her own tiny body.

She reached up and stroked this boy’s cheek, then held his jaw so that he had to look in her eyes. He could’ve pulled away, he was strong enough, but he didn’t.

‘Come back to me,’ she said.

The railing between them was four feet high. He could swing his leg over and it was done, but there was no way Ellie could pull him back if he didn’t want to. It was his choice.