We landed at Gatwick at 20 to 3 in the morning, and the cabin lights came up all at once, white, and 40 people who had been asleep put their hands over their faces.
Kirby took his headphones out and looked at me as if he had forgotten where he was. Then he remembered and looked away.
The coach took us back to Beckenham through empty roads. Nobody talked. Somewhere around Croydon, Konaté started snoring with his head against the window, and Neves reached across the aisle and put a rolled-up tracksuit top between Konaté's head and the glass without waking him.
My car was the only 1 in the car park with frost on it. I sat in it with the engine running and the blower roaring until the windscreen cleared, and I drove home to Dulwich with the radio off.
The stairwell light in our building is on a timer.
Click.
It went off on the turn at the first floor, the way it always does, and I did the last flight in the dark with my bag against the wall.
