‘Maybe I should come over there to you,’ she said.

He looked surprised, shook his head.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

His voice was deeper than Logan’s, but still somehow not fully formed.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Come over. So we can talk.’

He took a large breath then released it. Looked up and down the bridge again. Then shifted his weight and lifted his leg so that his foot was on top of the railing. She had to move backwards to make room for him, but she held on to his wrists. With a flex of muscle he was up then over, the same movement Logan did in the CCTV footage only in reverse, from the bad side to the good. From death to life.

Ellie put her arms around him and felt him squirm. It was inappropriate but she didn’t care, she wanted to hold on to him and never let him go. The size of him towering over her was comforting. She hadn’t felt that strange sensation in months, the weird dislocation of touching a teenage boy already taller than you, marvelling at the physical presence of the thing you’d created, something that was no longer part of you at all, completely alien.

She was still holding him, and she felt his arms go round her. She began crying. He took hold of her shoulders and prised himself away.

She wiped at her tears and looked up to see him doing the same. She laughed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

He shook his head.

Behind him, Ellie could see the orange flashing light on the maintenance van as it approached.

‘What’s your name?’ she said.

He took a long time to answer. He was trembling. ‘Sam.’

She noticed a dark stain on his jeans where he’d wet himself.

‘Will I take you home?’ she said.

He shook his head, panic on his face.

She rubbed his arm. ‘It’s all right, you can come back to my house, we’ll get you sorted, OK?’

He thought about it then nodded.

The van arrived and Gerry got out. ‘Everything all right, Ellie?’

She put on a smile. ‘Fine, Gerry, thanks.’

‘Got a call from the office, is all.’

‘It’s OK, really.’

Gerry looked undecided. He couldn’t leave them standing here on the bridge in case of a change of heart, she understood that.

‘We’re just heading home,’ she said.

She guided Sam away, back towards the south end of the bridge.

Gerry scratched at his beard and called after her. ‘If you’re sure you don’t need any help?’

She looked at Sam, his hair flicked across his face, and turned back.

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve got him.’

4

She had her arm around his waist as they walked, trying to help him put one foot in front of the other as if he was an injured passenger being led away from a car crash.

‘We’ll get you sorted,’ she said, rubbing his side.

He didn’t react, kept his head down, feet plodding on like he was in a trance.

She’d forgotten about the awkwardness of teenage boys.

The rumble and judder of traffic continued to swamp the pair of them, hundreds of people driving to their destinations regardless of Ellie and Sam’s little drama. It must’ve been the same when Logan jumped. Did anyone driving across the bridge that day even realise something had happened? Hundreds of cars must’ve passed Logan as he walked towards the middle of the bridge. Dozens more in the few moments he stood there. And yet more as he climbed over and stepped off.

But the drivers’ eyes would’ve been on the road ahead. People only realised something happened if the bridge got closed to traffic, and they never did that. One incident Ellie remembered from a long time ago was when someone, instead of jumping off the bridge, climbed the suspension cables and threatened to jump off. They had to close the bridge that day. In the end the guy never jumped, and he was charged with breach of the peace when he clambered down. Road users were furious. The same kind of people who tut on a train when someone jumps in front of it, because they’re going to be five minutes late for a meeting.

Twenty people kill themselves by jumping off the Forth Road Bridge every year. They were about to celebrate the bridge’s fiftieth anniversary soon. That added up to a thousand people. But it only rarely made the news, partly because it wasn’t deemed newsworthy, partly because journalists had guidelines about reporting suicide. If you made a big deal about it in the papers you got lots of copycat deaths. Imagine sitting at home reading about someone killing themselves and thinking, oh yeah, that’s what I want to do.

Ellie looked at Sam. Maybe that’s what he’d done. Maybe he knew Logan, or had heard about Logan jumping, and thought he would do the same. Or maybe there was another kid who’d jumped off more recently, a friend of Sam’s. She knew that in South Queensferry, in the shadow of the bridge, there was a higher suicide rate than elsewhere. Experts put it down to simple opportunity. People saw the bridge every day out their windows, on their way to work or school, and thought, why not?

They were at the end of the bridge now. Sam began crying again, staring at his hands as if he might find the answer to life there. Ellie wanted to tell him it wasn’t that easy, there were no answers.

‘I’ll take care of you,’ she said.

They stepped off the bridge and the vibration under their feet stopped, though the rumble of traffic noise was still everywhere.

Ellie ushered Sam round the corner on to the access road. As they headed downhill the noise reduced, leaving an oppressive murmur, the crows from earlier cawing and flapping in the tops of the trees.

‘I live down at the Binks,’ Ellie said.

It was awkward to keep walking with her arm round his waist as they headed downhill, so she removed it and took his hand in hers. He let her. It felt odd, the slope pushing them forwards, holding hands as if they were a couple, this half-boy, half-man towering over her, her hand engulfed in his like she was the child. But she felt a thrill, too, an electricity running from his touch through her hand and up her arm.

For a moment she considered what it would look like if they met anyone she knew. She was twice as old as him, and he was far too old to be holding hands with his mum. Not that she was his mother of course.

At the bottom of the hill she pointed right. ‘This way. It’s not far.’

He walked in the direction she indicated. She wondered what was going through his mind. What had driven him up there today? What was so awful in his life that he couldn’t see any alternative? She was used to the wondering. The lack of answers burned as much today as it did the first day, and it would burn just as ferociously on her deathbed. At least with Sam she had a chance of finding an answer.

‘You OK?’

He shook his head.

‘Let’s get you home,’ she said.

5

‘Try these on.’

She held up a pair of Logan’s jeans. Dark green, skinny fit. She remembered when he brought them home, one of the first things she’d let him buy for himself, on a trip into Edinburgh shopping with mates. Just one of a million little independences, all the ways in which children grow into their own lives, away from their parents.

Sam was a couple of inches taller than Logan, but they were both thin and bony, the jeans would still fit.

Sam sat on Logan’s bed, his hands over his lap to hide the wet stain on the front of his trousers. Ellie hadn’t mentioned it but the offer of trousers meant he knew that she knew. She was thrilled they shared a secret, only the two of them knew what just happened on the bridge, it connected them forever, no matter what came next.

Sam’s eyes darted round the room as he took the jeans and held them like ancient relics.

Ellie looked round the room too. It wasn’t a shrine, she wasn’t insane, thinking Logan would come back one day and slot back into his old life, she just couldn’t bring herself to clear his things out. His plain blue bedspread, nondescript after a childhood of cartoon characters on there. His music posters, Frightened Rabbit, Chvrches, Haim, Lorde. She was glad about that, strong female figures among them, talented, independent women, no R&B idiots in bikinis. His PS3 and Xbox and iPod and laptop sat in a corner, his neatly ordered bookshelf full of zombie stories and graphic novels.