4

‘No; classical music.’

‘Like the Beatles?’

‘Not exactly. Beethoven, that sort of thing.’

‘That no a dug? Ah saw that fillum.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Evening.’

‘Stewart! Thank fuck. Great to see you. Mine’s whatever overpriced Continental lager this is. Ask BB for details.’

Ferg holds up a nearly drained pint glass. We’re in The Head in Hand. Ferg – lanky, darkly foppish-haired, eyes glinting – is the same Bodie Ferguson of the golf course story. The Head in Hand is the latest name for a pub on Union Street in the town centre where we’ve all been hanging out since before we were legally allowed to. When we first started sidling in for a bottle of alcopop and two straws it was called Sneaky Pete’s, then it became Murphy’s during Stonemouth’s belated and short-lived Irish-bar phase, then The Mason’s Arms, and for the last couple of years it’s been The H in H, apparently. Overdue for a name change.

The decor changes more slowly; still much like it always was, which is nondescript. On the outside, on Union Street itself, there’s a big awning all the smokers congregate under; inside it’s the usual Friday night crush, with most people standing. Our lot form a knot of bodies corralled into a little raised area with wooden railings near the food service end of the bar, handy for the gents. I get a lot of hugs and claps on the back from the guys, who are mostly actual guys, though with some lady drinking buddies too. BB is Big Bairn: Nichol Dunn. I find him, find out who’s drinking what and head for the bar.

While I’m waiting, trying to catch an eye, Ferg puts his glass down, sliding it between me and the big rustic-looking guy next to me, then follows his arm in, wriggling until he’s squeezed himself between us, his body pressed against mine. The big farmer chappie scowls at him and rumbles in the near subsonic but Ferg ignores him.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he tells me. ‘You well?’ He frowns, picks at my jacket with two fingers, rubbing. ‘What’s this? You haven’t developed taste while you’ve been away, have you? Who put you up to it? Is it a girl?’

‘No,’ I tell him, ‘it’s money.’

‘Not a girl?’

‘Girldom in general. No one specific. Girls like the—’

‘So, where’ve you been? Why have you been out of touch?’

‘All over. And I’ve not been out of touch; you have.’

‘I most certainly have not. Few people I know have a higher level of in-touchability than I do. Possibly none.’

‘You keep changing phone numbers.’

‘I keep changing phones. Accidents happen to the little fuckers.’

‘You can take your number with you.’

‘So people keep telling me. I can never be bothered with the paperwork.’

‘Well—’

‘And “All over”? Excuse me? Could you be a little more vague?’

Ferg was my great rival at school for prizes, especially the English prize. He was pretty good at Art but I was better, and he was a lot more adept at Maths and Physics than me. I usually prevailed in French and Chemistry. The rest of the subjects were sort of shared between us, with the occasional other kid allowed to best us on an ad hoc basis (I did a year of Latin by mistake). Quite an intense rivalry. I think the only subject we weren’t that bothered about was PE, and even there we were far from being the class weeds; middle rankers in the team-choosing ritual. Anyway, my best friend, for want of a better term, until I left in such a hurry and we lost touch.

‘I’m based in London,’ I tell him. ‘Not that I’m there often. I spend a lot of time at thirty-five thousand—’

‘You’re in London? Why wasn’t I informed? I’m in London sometimes! Which bit? Is it one of the cool areas? Do you have a spare room?’

‘Stepney.’

Ferg looks briefly thoughtful. I use the interval to wave at a lady barperson. ‘Is that a cool area?’ he asks.

‘Would it matter, if I had a spare room?’

‘Possibly not. We should swap numbers.’

‘Call me; I’ve kept the same number.’

‘So, where do you go when you’re not in London?’

‘Everywhere. Cities, mostly. I’ve been to at least three cities in China with populations greater than the whole of Scotland, which I guarantee you’ve never—’

‘So you’re in oil.’

‘Ferg!’ I glare at his thin, fascinated-looking face. ‘I went to art school. You came through to visit me and practically swooned when I took you round the Mackintosh building. What the fuck would I be doing—’

‘Oh yes. I forgot. Still, stranger things happen.’

I shake my head. ‘Only to you, Ferg.’

There’s silence for a moment. I catch the lady barperson’s eyes again and smile. Jeez, she looks young. You can’t serve behind a bar if you’re too young to be served in front of it, can you? This is just starting to happen to me, a sign of my advancing years. She nods, holds up one finger. In a polite way, like, One moment, sir.

Ferg says, ‘So what is it you do again?’

‘I light buildings.’

‘You’re a pyromaniac?’

‘Ha! Be still, my aching sides. No, I—’

‘I’m not the first to make that—’

‘Not quite.’

‘You should probably stop phrasing it like that then.’

‘I work for a consultancy; we design lighting for buildings. Usually buildings of some architectural distinction.’

‘So basically you do floodlighting. You’re a floodlighter.’

‘Yes, I’m a floodlighter,’ I sigh, as the girl comes over. I smile, say Hi, take my phone out and read off the drinks order.

‘Yes,’ Ferg says, sighing, ‘you would have an iPhone, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, I would. And a BlackBerry for—’

‘So, Stewart, you stick big lights round buildings and make sure they’re pointing sort of generally towards it. That’s your job. That’s what you do. This is your career.’

‘Well, obviously it’s not quite as complicated as you make it sound. What about you?’

Ferg jerks back as far as he can in the crush, bringing another scowl from the farmerish-looking guy behind him. ‘You’re offering to floodlight me?’

I find myself sighing, too. This has always happened when I’m around Ferg, like his mannerisms are contagious. Or he’s just always being annoying.

‘Do you have a job, Ferg?’

‘Of course! I’m a wildly talented games designer. You’ve probably played some of the games I’ve designed.’

‘Oh, I think we can all say that, Ferg,’ I tell him, archly, glancing back at the crowd of our friends in the raised area. He almost laughs, throwing his head back as though he’s about to, but then not. ‘How the fuck did you end up in games design?’ I ask him. ‘You told me games reached their peak with Asteroids.’

‘I may have exaggerated.’

‘And I thought games were designed by huge teams these days anyway.’

‘They are, once you get past the individual genius, bolt-from-the-blue inspiration phase. I’ll leave you to guess—’

‘I see. And this means you’re based where?’

‘Dundee. Don’t laugh; it’s quite cool these days. Well, cold. Naturally I fantasise about the heady delights of the central belt – the dreaming spires of Edinburgh, the urban chic of downtown Glasgow – but at least it’s not here, the land that time forgot.’

He glances at the big farmer. Thankfully, the big farmer doesn’t seem to have heard. Ferg has got me into a couple of fights with remarks like that in places like this and most of his pals can tell the same story. Ferg himself rarely feels the need to stick around for the resulting fisticuffs, however. Probably reckons he’s done his job with the individual genius, bolt-from-the-blue inspiration phase. Anyway, Faintheart was one of many potential nicknames Ferg very nearly got stuck with.

‘Dundee it is for now,’ he concludes, sounding wistful. It’s …’ He looks away for a moment as the girl starts delivering our drinks. ‘Handy.’

‘How nice.’

‘And cheap,’ he tells me, eyes glittering. ‘I have a duplex. It’s huge. You should come visit. You can see Fife from most of the rooms, though you mustn’t let that put you off.’

‘Maybe one day.’

‘You could bring some floodlights.’

‘Here,’ I tell him, handing him the first three pints. ‘Break the habit of a lifetime and make yourself useful.’ I nod at the glasses while he’s still on the inward breath of synthetic outrage. ‘Yours, BB’s and Mona’s. Try not to drink them all before they get to their rightful owners.’

Ferg’s eyes narrow as he takes the glasses in a triangle of fingers. He used to be notorious for taking sips from everybody’s drinks as he carried them, ‘To stop them spilling.’ Sipper Ferguson was another nickname that very nearly became permanent.

‘You are a hard, embittered man, Stewart Gilmour.’

‘Ferg, you’d fist a skunk if you thought there was a drink in it.’

Ferg shakes his head as he walks carefully away. ‘Rude, as well.’

It’s a good night. Lot of chat, craic, whatever, lot of laughing. Good to be with the old gang again. We visit several bars. Ferg, an equal-opportunities predator, hits on three women and at least two guys, including, he later claims, the big burly farmer from The Head in Hand. Exchanged numbers and everything. Books and covers and all that shit.

We’re walking between bars near the docks when I catch a whiff of something sharp, like chlorine or whatever it is they put in swimming pools, and I’m right back, the first time I definitely saw Ellie, years and years ago.

It was one of those hot, hazy summers from my teens, the enveloping mist starting each day off soft and silky, everything sort of quiet and mysterious, the whole firth, the horizon-stretching beaches north and south, and the town itself submerged from above by the enfolding grey presence of the clouds, then the sun burning it all off by breakfast, leaving only long, low banks of mist skulking out to sea that rarely ventured back in towards land before evening, when the sun slid north and west across the long shadow of the hills, its trajectory almost matching the sloped profile of the land, so that it hung there, orange and huge, as though forever on the brink of setting.

We spent a lot of time at the Lido that summer. It was built on the striated rocks that extend to the north of the estuary mouth, its cream-white walls washed by the waves at high tide. It had one Olympic-sized pool, various shallow ponds for children to splash about in, a separate diving pool, a Turkish baths complex, a glass-walled solarium, a café and lots of deckchairs on wide terraces, gently sloped to make it easier to catch the sun.

It had been built in the thirties, had its heyday then and in the fifties – it was closed for most of the Second World War – went to seed in the sixties, fell into disrepair in the seventies and eighties, was closed during the nineties and got refurbished with Millennium lottery money in 1999, opening in the spring of 2000. It became the cool new place to hang out, especially if you were too young to drink. Too young to drink without getting hassled all the time, anyway.

My first unambiguous memory of the girl was at the Lido, during one of those glorious, mist-discovered days: her, just out of the pool, taking off a bathing cap, her head tipped just so, releasing a long fawn fall of hair the colour of wet sand, swinging out.

Her swimming costume was one-piece, black; her legs looked like they’d stretch into different time zones when she lay down, and her face was just this vision of blissed serenity. I remember the distant keening of the gulls, and the shush of waves breaking outside against the Lido walls, and the smell of swimming pool. I remember the radiance of those long, honey-coloured limbs, glowing in the late golden-red of the afternoon sun.

Thinking back, she was as straight-up-and-down as a boy and had almost nothing up top apart from broad, swimmer’s shoulders, but there was enough there to hint at what was to come, to let you know this was a girl still about to become a young woman. She moved with the sort of grace that makes you think everybody else must be made out of Lego.

She saw me looking at her. She smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, and it certainly wasn’t a come-on smile, but it was the easiest, most natural one I’d ever seen.

I was fifteen. She was a year younger. She’d gone before I recovered the composure even to think of actually talking to her. I wouldn’t see her again for nearly a year, wouldn’t touch her or really talk to her for over another twelve months beyond that, and our first kiss was even further over the horizon, lost in the mists, but I knew then that we belonged together. I wanted her. More than that: I wanted to be wanted by her. More than that, too: I needed her to be part of my life, the major part. I was that certain, just with that look, that smile.

It seems crazy now. It seemed crazy then – you can’t decide you’ve found your life’s desire, your sole soulmate on the strength of a glance, on the swing of some hair, whether you’re fifteen or fifty – but when something like that hits, you don’t have much choice. I was barely more than a kid and scarcely able to think straight enough to know something like that, but I felt it: the impulsive, cast-in-iron, decision-making part of my being presented this as a stone-cold unshakeable certainty, valid in perpetuity from this point on, before, it felt, my rational, conscious mind could get a chance to think on it or even comment; every part of me apart from my brain got together and told the grey-pink hemispherical bits that this was just the way it was.

I didn’t even say anything to my friends, though some said they saw a change in me from then on. Hindsight, maybe. Maybe not.

Hindsight. What we all wouldn’t give …

Yeah, well.

‘Weird, isn’t it? All these years flying in and out of Dyce on family holidays and such, and I never made the connection with throwing dice, and dicing with death, and shit like that. It was always just where you flew from if you lived up here on the cold shoulder of Scotland. Wonder if the name gives nervous flyers the cold sweats?’

‘Well done, Stewart, you’ve discovered homonyms.’

‘Homonymphs?’

Ferg looks at me, suspicious but uncertain. I flap one hand against his shoulder. ‘Ha ha, just kidding.’

We’re in The Howf now, our other regular drinking hole from the old days, closer to the docks and the rough end of town. The Howf has kept the same name for nearly half a century, so it can be done. It had a garden – who knew? – or at least a sloped bit of yard at the back, which they started to use for anything other than barrel storage only when the smoking ban came in. Decking, garden furniture, an only slightly leaky perspex roof. The sit-ooterie, it’s called. High stone walls all round, not overlooked by any what-you-might-call inhabited windows. Became the favoured toking spot for Stonemouth’s stoners the evening it opened; busy tonight.

Slaves to tradition, Ferg and I are in a corner, sitting on those wobbly, white-plastic, one-piece chairs you see in back gardens and downmarket resorts throughout the world. We’re passing a J back and forth, occasionally jostled from behind by the people swirling around us on the decking, all chatting and laughing and shouting. Our drinks – my barely begun bottle of Staropramen, his half-downed pint of snakebite and what remains of a large voddy – are perched on the wooden railing in front of us. On the ground on the far side of the railing, beneath orange floods caped with haar, ten or so people are bobbing around silently, earbudded up to the same remote source of music. Looks weird.

One of the girls who’s bopping glances up at me and smiles. It’s lovely Haley, who I was talking to earlier, on the walk from the last pub to here. Wee sister of Tiger Eunson. With an even wee-er sister called Britney, not yet of an age. Tiger is really Drew and called Tiger not because of anything to do with golf but because of some bizarre, bowel-related experiment involving Guinness, years ago, when we all first started drinking. Never worked. The experiment, I mean. He’s in work, a butcher in one of the Toun’s besieging ring of Tescos.

Anyway, I thought we were getting on really well, me and Haley. That smile from the girl confirms it. Typical. And me meaning to stay pure and devoted to Ellie this weekend, because I’m still hoping we’ll bump into each other, Ellie and me, and if and when that does happen, then who knows? Because it’s still unfinished between us, I don’t care what anybody else thinks or tries to enforce. Even she might think it’s all done, tied off, in the past, but how does she really know that? I’d just need to talk to her, to let her know how I still feel …

No, I’m kidding myself, I know I am. Of course it’s over. Finally, for ever. Almost certainly. But still there’s this feeling, if nothing else, that it needs to be laid to rest properly, otherwise it’ll be like one of those Japanese ghost story things, dead but undead, wandering the earth and disturbing respectable folks until it gets the burial it’s always needed. Yeah, something like that. So, sweet though that smile from the young and delectable Haley is, I can’t really follow through (I’m probably too drunk anyway, or firmly set on the course of getting that way) because that’s where I made my mistake the last time, that’s how I got distracted and everything fell apart. I’m not letting that happen again. Still, I smile back; no harm in that. And you always need a Plan B. Or Plans B through Z. I start humming something from The Defamation of Strickland Banks.

‘So, how much does this floodlighting scam pay?’ Ferg asks.

Fuck. Back to reality. I clear my throat. ‘A fair bit.’

‘Don’t be fucking coy with me. How much?’

‘I don’t know. I get more in expenses most months but, obviously, it’s all been spent already. And some of it’s in—’

‘What did you put down on your mortgage application?’

‘I lied.’

‘How much?’

‘Oh, I lied quite a lot.’

He punches me on the shoulder, not hard. ‘How much money?’

‘Hundred grand a year,’ I tell him. This is a lie.

His eyes narrow. ‘Was that a lie upwards or downwards?’

‘Why’s it fucking matter?’

‘I’m supposed to be the exiled prince,’ he tells me. ‘I’m the returning alpha star here, not you.’

‘The what?’ I say, laughing. ‘You’re not even exiled. You’re only in fucking Dundee and you’re back here all the time.’ I nod at the scrappy, much ducted rear wall of the pub. ‘That barman knew your order. He called you Ferg.’

‘It’s voluntary exile. And I like coming back to make sure nobody’s overtaken me.’

‘Overtaken you?’

‘In fame, coolness and financial reward.’

I stare at him. I so want to tell the fucker I’ve just been made partner, but it actually feels cooler not to somehow. I can win this one without even using that semi-trump card (it’s only a semi-trump card – if there is such a thing – because it’s just junior partner, not equity, which is the kind of distinction Ferg is likely to know about and pounce on).

I shake my head. ‘I’m sure even you used to be cooler than this, Ferg, I’ll give you that.’

‘So, what—’

‘And what about Zimba? He’s a DJ, isn’t he? He must be—’

‘That’s—’

‘And Craig Govie. He plays for QPR. Arsenal are interested. Coining it in, I—’

‘Not counting lumpen randoms who’ve risen without trace on the strength of making round things revolve.’

‘I bet they’ve both been back more often in the last five years—’

‘Never mind them, what do you make?’

‘I’m not telling you.’

‘Don’t be a cunt. Why not?’

‘Because it seems to matter to you so much. That’s unhealthy.’

‘Don’t be so naive. It’s not unhealthy to hate the very idea of one’s friends doing better than oneself—’

‘And when the fuck did you start referring to yourself—’

‘—in fact it’s only natural. Everybody feels the same way. They just don’t want to admit it.’

I tap my chest. ‘Well, I don’t feel the same way.’

Ferg snorts. ‘Bet you do.’

‘No I don’t. I want all my friends to do at least as well as me. That way I can stop worrying about them.’ I draw on the J, pass it back. ‘Makes it less likely the fuckers’ll ask for a loan, too.’

‘I haven’t forgotten!’

‘Eh?’ I’m having a little trouble focusing now. Ferg looks quite upset. ‘What?’

‘I’ll write you a cheque! They still have cheques, don’t they?’ He starts fishing inside his jacket, patting pockets.

‘That’s right,’ I say, remembering. ‘You owe me money. I’d forgotten. Where’s my fucking dosh, O exiled superstar?’

‘Give me a second!’

‘And, anyway, how much do you make?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s commercially sensitive.’

‘You fucking hypocrite. Give me that.’

I swipe the joint off him while he’s still digging into his inside jacket pockets, muttering. There’s not much drug left. I grind it out against the railing; it joins what by now must be a whole stratified carpet of roaches under the decking. One day, after an admittedly unlikely month or so of no rain, the wee, brown, screwed-up remains will all be ignited together by a stray match or unextinguished butt and half the town’ll get stoned.

We’re so old-school, to be smoking at all. Young folks today, they have this bizarre idea that all smoking’s bad for you, not just tobacco. Prefer pills. Clean, chemically; no need to sit drawing all this greasy, heavy-looking smoke into your pristine little lungs. Lightweights, say I.

I look round the people on the decking. I recognise most of them. So many people doing the same things they were when I left, hanging out in the same places, saying the same things, having the same arguments. It feels comfortable, reassuring, just being able to step back into our old shared life so easily, but at the same time a bit terrifying, and a touch sad.

They’re happy. Are they happy? Let’s assume they’re fairly happy. So, that’s all right. Nothing wrong with that. Life is patterns. Old man Murston said that, I think, on one of our hill walks: Jo the Obi. Nothing wrong with people having patterns to their lives, some stability, some set of grooves they can settle into, if that’s what they want. Don’t get the existential horrors just because some people like staying where they were raised, marrying the bod next door and getting a job that means they’ll never win X Factor. Good luck to them having steady paid employment these days.

Though these are the survivors, of course; you can’t see the ghosts who aren’t here, the casualties we’ve lost along the way. We don’t leave room for them as we dance and chatter and mingle. Four dead – two in car crashes – a handful scattered to the winds, fallen into distant lands, fucked up on drink or drugs or gone religious – or even hunkered down with a conspiracy-theorist gun-nut and a litter of wild kids up a dead-end track in South Carolina, in one case. Two in prison; one in Spain for drug smuggling, one in England for child abuse. Allegedly the bairn-botherer was got at inside; he lost part of an ear and was told that was just a taster – if he ever showed his face in the Toun again he’d get a free sex change.

I look at Ferg as he pulls a scrap of paper out of a pocket and holds it up to the light, grimacing. He flaps one long-fingered hand out, finds his glass of vodka on the wooden railing, drains it and replaces it without pulling his attention away from the vaguely cheque-shaped bit of paper. Most dextrous. But worrying. He always did drink too much.

Later. Somebody’s flat. Not sure where. Navigation back to the maw and the paw’s may be interesting. Taxi recommended, but that’ll be a wait. Loud, pounding music: Rihanna? Pink? People up dancing, though I’m a bit slumped. Ferg clutching my shoulder, shaking me, yelling in my ear: ‘You’re like me, Gilmour! It’s just something to get through. You realise they’re all fucking mad! All of them. Statistically the clever ones like you and me hardly count! We are surrounded by idiots. Trick is not to let them know, to keep your head down as proudly as possible, or raise it and let them do their worst, the fuckers. But we’re surrounded by idiots. Idiots! Fucking nutters!’

I raise one index finger and point it at him. I can see this finger; it is waving from side to side like a strand of weed in a gentle current. ‘Do you,’ I ask him slowly, ‘still listen … to … System of a Down?’ It comes out more as ‘Sisim’ve Dow?’, but he knows what I mean.

‘Of course!’ he says, jerking upright, instantly defensive.

I use the pointing finger to poke him in the chest, even though it turns out his chest is slightly further away than I’d initially estimated. ‘Then don’t … pontificate to me about being surrounded by idiots.’

‘Oh, fuck off!’ He inspects an empty-looking bottle of cider and gets to his feet. ‘Another drink?’

I shake my head. He goes off. The beautiful Haley appears before me and seems to be trying to drag me to my feet, to dance, but I just sit there, slumped and smiling and shaking my head while she tugs at my arms.

‘My dear,’ I tell her, ‘I’d be no use to you. But, rest assured, you have made an old man very happy.’

At least, that’s what I try to say, what I think I might have said. She shakes her head and scrunches her face up, turning to one side as though to indicate that she can’t hear what I’m saying. I extract one of my hands from her grip and use it to pat both of hers. I try to repeat what I think I may have just said, though the exact details are already a little hazy. This and the patting seem to do the trick, as she gives a big theatrical sigh and lets her shoulders slump expressively, then smiles and disappears. Lovely girl. I indulge in a fairly theatrical sigh myself. I need a cup of tea or a Red Bull or something.

Ferg falls back into his seat, waving a half-bottle of supermarket vodka. ‘Listen, Stewart, we are surrounded by idiots!’ he yells, as though he’s only just thought of this. Oh fuck, here we go again. ‘They deserve all they fucking get: everything. Fucking global fucking warming if that’s really our fault and not fucking Icelandic fucking volcanos, and lying politicians and war and everything else. But we don’t deserve what they fucking bring us! And that’s the fucking trouble with democracy!’

‘It’s democratic,’ I say. I’m not sure about the value of this contribution myself, frankly, but it’s all I’ve got.

Ferg was trapped in Miami when the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name went off last year, and obviously took it personally. I want to tell him that it turned out the volcano was actually a green event, climatically; they worked it out: while it released north of a hundred and fifty thousand tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere each day, the flights that it grounded would have released significantly more. Who’d have thought?

But I’m being honest with myself, and my chances of getting this fascinating, instructive point across are fairly minimal in my present, pleasant state of advanced inebriation. I’ll just make a note to myself in my brain’s on-board Notes app to tell him this at some other juncture, when I’m sober.

Ha ha. Like that’s going to happen.

‘The smart are forced to pay for the stupidities of the fuckwits!’

‘Boo,’ I say, trying to be supportive.

Ferg looks at me. ‘You’re completely fucking wasted, aren’t you?’

I nod. ‘Pletely,’ I agree.

But then I have had a lot to drink, and some blow, and I vaguely recall knocking back a pill of some sort earlier. So I have every right to be completely fucking wasted. I would have considerable cause for complaint were I in any other state than completely fucking wasted. Questions would need to be asked, heads metaphorically roll and possibly refunds offered for goods purchased in good faith, were I not.

Ferg has probably had more than I have, and he still seems relatively together, but then that’s his problem. I should, at this point, probably remind him again that he drinks too much, and that not being completely fucking wasted by now, given what we’ve put away, is positively unhealthy, and a cause for some concern. But I’m not sure I’m entirely capable of articulating something so relatively complicated. And, to be fair, he may have heard this before.

‘… with these fair hands, Mr Gilmour,’ a girl with short black hair and laughing eyes is saying to me. I may have dozed off for a second there. She looks very young: late high-school age. But still: ‘Mr Gilmour’? Fair, bonny face, short hair a chap might want to ruffle his hand through. ‘But it wasn’t me. Not the ones that – the famous ones!’ I think that’s what she’s saying. ‘Just so’s you know.’ Music’s very loud. ‘Talk anybody into anything, that girl.’ Then she disappears.

And she’s back again! No, my mistake; it’s the delightful Haley. Here she is before me. Holding what looks like my jacket. Well, that is forward. Still, what a persistent girl. You have to admire that.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I start to tell her, waving one hand in what I hope looks like a sad, regretful and yet still respectful manner, while remaining expressive of the hope that this is only No for now, and might not mean No for ever, depending on how things work out elsewhere.

She thrusts my jacket into my hands and leans her lovely head right down to mine. ‘Your taxi’s here!’ she yells.

I stare at her, dumbfounded. I ordered a taxi?

Then she and Ferg are helping me up and taking me downstairs and putting me in the back of a taxi and I’m saying hello to the driver because I know him from school, I think, and Ferg gets in beside me and Haley kisses me on the cheek and then we’re at Mum and Dad’s front door, and next thing I know I’m standing in the front hall and Ferg’s on the step outside and I’m saying, ‘Well, thanks for coming,’ and Ferg’s shaking his head and retreating and saying something about idiots before getting back into the waiting taxi and the front door closes and leaves me standing in the front hall in the darkness.

Tea and bed, I think.

I wake up with my head on the kitchen table, a full, cold mug of tea by my head, a small pool of drool on the table surface wetting my cheek and a grey dawn hazing the window panes.

I head upstairs for more sleep in a room and bed still familiar even after five years away.

Home.