God he loved her. Hearing her voice on the other end of the phone broke him into tiny little pieces. Fragmenting further. And it was raining, heavily. An epic downpour. The narrow ledge he was standing on was getting greasier. Even standing perfectly still, a dial tone buzzing in his ear from the just ended phone call, he could sense his position was worsening. Marriage now terminated. As if there had been any doubt. A helicopter hovering overhead its spotlight trained on him. Six police cars with the full array of emergency vehicles primed below. At precisely 9.32pm, on a Thursday, from the seventeenth story window ledge of his law firms office, Frank Melia closed his eyes, ceased to think, and jumped.

Whiteness. A blurred whiteness. A metallic taste in his mouth and voices. The voices concerned him most. He hadn’t expected the sharp sense of taste either.