The final frame

The freight train now passed at 23:27, Ria explained, though that could vary. On the first evening her phone had not recorded. On the second, rain had ruined the picture. On Thursday she had packed up early when her sister called. The tin had stayed under the table.

‘The time on the photograph,’ said Vera. ‘23:14.’

‘The last train on their last shift together. My husband transferred to the depot after that. Bas stayed.’ She smiled. ‘When I gave him the photographs, he wrote that on the back. He wanted to remember the last train.’

On the bridge Ria clamped her phone above the chalk mark. She wanted the old signal-box door, the platform and the bend all in one shot. In a test clip the previous week she had filmed only the rails. Bas had messaged to ask where the radiator guard had gone, the one they used to dry their gloves on in winter.

‘That's indoors,’ said Vera.

‘Exactly. I'm filming a railway. He wants to see where he worked.’

Vera asked Ivo whether they could open the signal box. He consulted his keys and told them not to touch anything. Inside, the air smelled of cold dust. Ria filmed the radiator, the square of unfaded paint where a calendar had hung and a deep scratch in the window ledge.

She lingered over the scratch.

‘Bas tried to get a cupboard through here,’ she told the camera. ‘Not our dad. You've been getting that wrong for thirty years.’

They watched the clip together. Ria corrected the automatic captions: cupboard, not custard. Then they returned to the bridge. Vera held the blue tin so the cable would not pull on the microphone.

When the locomotive rounded the bend, Ria started recording. The sound rolled between the brick walls. Above them, the glass in the lamp trembled. Ria tilted the phone up briefly, then back to the wagons. Vera understood why she had chosen the same spot each night. From here you could see the lamp shaking and the train disappear.

Afterwards Ria sent the film, together with the captioned footage from the signal box. They waited on the lower landing while the final wagon cleared the points.

Bas replied with a photograph of his hand, thumb raised. Then a message arrived: Left window still stuck?

Ria laughed, her voice roughened by the cold.

Yes, she typed. Vera tried it.

Vera had indeed. She could still see the red mark on her palm. Back in the café she set the clock back six minutes. Ria hung her cardigan over a chair and, this time, lowered the tea bag into the glass.