Stonemouth

1

Clarity.

That would have been good.

Instead, a cold, clinging mist. Not even mist; just a chill haze, drifting up the estuary. I’m standing fifty metres above the Firth of Stoun, in the middle of the road bridge, at the summit of the long, shallow trajectory it describes above the waters. Below, wind-stroked lines of breakers track up the firth, ragged creases of thin foam moving east to west under the steady push of the breeze; each wave forming, breaking, widening, then collapsing again before new crests start to rise amongst their pale, streaked remains, the whole doomed army of them vanishing like ghosts into the upriver blur.

Traffic moves on the northbound carriageway behind me; cars tearing, trucks rumbling and thumping over the expansion joints on the road surface. About half the cars and most of the trucks have their lights on as the evening, and the mist, close in.

I look up at the north tower of the suspension bridge, a double H shape rising another hundred metres into the murk, its grey flank stitched with little steady red lights. At the top there’s a single aircraft beacon producing sharp bursts the blue-white of a camera flash. The mist smears each pulse across a whole grey tract of sky.

I’m wondering how well the cameras up there can see through the haze. I’ve been standing here for a couple of minutes, looking like a prospective jumper for all that time. Usually by now a wee yellow van would have been sent along the cycle track from the control centre at the south end of the bridge to come and make sure I’m not thinking of Doing Something Stupid, which is what people still seem to say when they don’t want to say what they mean, which is Kill Yourself, or Commit Suicide.

Maybe cutbacks mean they’ve turned off the cameras, or there are just fewer staff to check the monitor screens, or they’re sending guys out on foot or on a bike to save fuel. Which, by the time they get to the right place, would probably mean the poor, terrified, hesitant wretch has already gone, to become just another streak of foam on the waves below. There are a lot of exits like that off the bridge but they rarely get reported because every time one is publicised there’s a handful of copycat suicides within the week. Which makes you wonder what these pitiful tribute artists would have done otherwise: taken pills, dived under a train or somehow soldiered on, too mired in their hopeless lives to think of a suitable way out for themselves?

Amongst us kids, growing up here, the story — delivered from the mouths of dads and big brothers who worked either on the bridge or for the coastguards, or just those who claimed to know about such things — was that the fall didn’t kill you; it just smashed all your major bones and knocked you out. If you were lucky, you drowned before you regained consciousness; if not, you got to thrash about as best you could with two broken arms and two broken legs before you drowned, unable to hold your face above water even if you’d changed your mind about dying in the meantime.

Or maybe you’d tied yourself to something heavy. That made it more definite, and you just vanished beneath the waves. We scared and excited each other with this sort of thing, attracted and repelled by anything grisly, like most kids. Though watching somebody getting beheaded on the web sort of had a greater immediacy, you had to admit.

Upriver, from here, you ought to be able to see the old road crossing and the rail bridge, five kilometres away to the west where the river narrows, and closer still you ought to get a good view of the Toun itself: the old and new docks, the retail and commerce parks, the dark central cluster of church spires and towers, and the peripheral scatter of pale high-rises in the housing estates, but the view dissolves into the mist before any of this is visible.

I look down at the waves again, wondering what Callum’s last thoughts were as he fell towards the water, and whether he died without waking up, or had time to suffer. I suppose every class at every school, every year at every school, has a first person to die — suicide, road crash, whatever — just like there’s a first person to get pregnant or father a child and a first person or a first couple to get married. Callum wasn’t our first death but he was our first suicide.

Our first death was Wee Malky, long ago. Well, not just our first death; something worse, in a way, but … well, it’s complicated.

Our school days felt an age away by the time Callum vaulted the safety railings on the road bridge but we still all knew one another, all kept in some sort of contact, so it had an effect on every one of us. Even me, the exile; even I heard almost immediately and — despite everything, despite the fact he’d been one of those who’d have severely fucked me up if they’d got their hands on me — I felt shocked.

At the time I thought maybe I’d be invited back to that funeral, but I wasn’t. Still too soon. Emotions too raw, my sins, or at least sin, unforgiven, the threats still hanging in the air.

The mist is still thickening, becoming what the locals call haar and threatening to turn into rain. I’m starting to wish I’d brought a thicker jacket with a hood, not this thin fashion item. What we call haar, I guess, if I’m being honest; I’m still a local, I suppose, even though it’s been a long five years. And I’m not contemplating suicide, though just coming back here might be a stupid and dangerous thing to do. I’m where I am right now so I can check out exactly how stupid and dangerous it might be.

And here comes a wee yellow bridge van, orange roof-light flashing and headlights twinkling through the mist as it drives up the grey-pink cycle track beside the grey-green pedestrian path.

I’m here to meet somebody, I think about telling whoever’s driving the van, as it approaches. I might even know them: an old school friend. The wipers flick once, slowly, clearing the moisture gathering on the van’s screen as it pulls up alongside. Two guys in it. Normally only one, I thought. In my current slightly paranoid state, that seems a little worrying. I get a tiny pulse of apprehension in my guts. The nearest man, the passenger, rolls down his window. A square, smooth, yet hard-looking face above a thick neck and bulky shoulders; bulky shoulders not clad in a high-visibility jacket, unlike the driver of the van. Small, recessed blue eyes, eyebrows darker than the buzz of lion-coloured hair covering his scalp.

It’s Powell Imrie, the man I’m here to meet. I’m still not sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

‘All right, Stu?’

I nod. I hate it when people call me Stu. ‘Powell.’

He looks up, grimaces. ‘Coming on to rain,’ he says, then jerks his head. ‘Jump in the back.’

I hesitate, then go to the rear of the van and open one of the doors. The yellow-painted metal floor has raised corrugations, scuffed a rust brown; I’ll be sharing the back with traffic cones and emergency-light clusters. The haar coats one side of my face with cold droplets and it’s getting chilly. It’s a ten-minute walk back to the viewing area where I parked the car; maybe more.

‘Jump in,’ Powell repeats, from inside. Pleasantly enough.

‘Aye, just shift stuff out the way,’ the van’s driver says. He’s older than me and Powell. I don’t recognise him. Powell was in my year at school, the biggest, toughest boy in the class, partly because he’d been held back a year. He was only ever casually a bully, as though even intimidating other kids was too easy, somewhat beneath him. He never actually hit me, though like everybody else I was certainly quite sufficiently intimidated, and always treated him with at least as much respect and deference as I did the more formidable teachers. Powell still commands respect and deference now; more, in fact. And he is one person I don’t want to get on the wrong side of, if this visit is either going to happen at all or be safe, be any sort of success.

On the other hand, the floor of the van is kind of grimy-looking and I’m wearing a decent pair of slate-grey Paul Smith jeans and an Armani jacket, plus, after I left this place — after I had to leave this place, after I was pretty much run out of this place — I swore I was done with being manipulated and told what to do.

Outside of work, obviously. And one or two relationships.

I don’t get in. I close the door again and look round the side of the van to Powell’s frowning face. ‘I’ll walk,’ I tell him, and start towards the south end of the bridge, retracing my steps. This could be really stupid. My mouth has gone dry. I hope my steps look steady.

After a moment the van whines backwards, reversing to keep pace with me. Powell’s face wears an expression somewhere between a sneer and a grin as he looks at me, taking in my clothes. ‘Too manky in there for ye, aye?’ Powell always had one of those deep, carrying, slightly gravelly voices. It’s gritty rather than gravelly now; he must have stopped smoking.

‘I need the exercise,’ I tell him, and keep on walking. I’m not looking at him but I hear what might be a snort. He says something to the driver and the van stops. I leave it behind as I keep on walking.

After a few moments I hear doors slamming. Three slams. Shit, I have time to think.

Then, while I’m paranoid-fantasising about being picked up and thrown off the bridge by three guys, one of whom I somehow missed, the van’s engine roars and it comes tearing past me, transmission whining even louder. I wonder if — as I tumble towards the waves — I’ll have time to get the iPhone out, hit Facebook and change my status to ‘Dead’. The wee yellow van jerks to a stop and the passenger door is opened.

I look inside. Powell is in the driver’s seat now, massive mitts gripping the steering wheel. He’s smiling thinly at me. The bridge employee who was driving is in the back, sitting on the floor surrounded by road cones and holding onto the back of the empty passenger seat. He doesn’t look over-pleased.

‘Happy now?’ Powell asks.

‘Cheers,’ I tell both of them, and get in. Below, just appearing from under the deck of the bridge, a small brown tug is heading upstream, its blunt bows punching through the grey waves of the firth.

‘No really supposed to do three-point turns, Mr Imrie,’ the bridge worker in the back says, as Powell shuffles the van back and forth to point back the way it came. ‘One-way, kinda thing.’

Imrie just ignores him, seemingly taking some pleasure in gunning the engine, whirling the wheel and taking both ends of the van alarmingly close to the railings on either side of the combined cycle and pedestrian path. It’s actually a five-point turn, but that’s not the sort of thing you’d choose to point out to somebody like Powell Imrie.

‘You well, Stu?’ he asks as we speed back down the path.

‘Yeah, fine,’ I say. ‘You?’

‘Um, there’s sort of a limit, Mr Imrie,’ the guy in the back says as we start to overtake traffic on the far side of the bridge.

‘Don’t worry,’ Powell says smoothly to the guy in the back, turning his head a little, still accelerating. He flashes a smile at me. ‘Dandy,’ he says. ‘Just dandy.’ He looks at my jeans and jacket again. ‘Doing all right, are we?’

‘Not broke,’ I agree.

Powell is also dressed in jeans, though his are the more conventional blue. Topped off with a white tee and a padded tartan lumber shirt, predominantly red, with expensive-looking earbuds dangling on short leads from a breast pocket. He looks tanned, and fit and solid as ever, his massive shoulder almost touching mine across the van’s cab. He was probably the strongest boy in the school when he was still in third year the first time. Star of the rugby team.

We’re still gathering speed, the bars of the railings on my side blurring past less than half a metre away. Squinting through the mist, it looks like there’s a couple of people on bikes pedalling their way up the shallow slope of the bridge towards us, a hundred metres dead ahead.

‘Um,’ the guy behind us says, ‘think there’s folk on the cycle path, Mr Imrie.’

‘Haven’t got a siren on this thing, have you?’ Powell asks him.

‘Naw, Mr Imrie.’

‘Shame. Aw well.’

He starts to brake and we pass the cyclists at a sedate fifty or so, though — largely by flashing his headlights at them insistently — he still forces them to swerve over to the pedestrian side of the track. They stop, standing astride their bikes and staring at us as we race past. Imrie waves cheerily.

‘How’s Ellie?’

‘She’s fine. Take it you know about Callum.’

‘Yeah, of course. Not totally out of touch.’

Powell looks appropriately solemn for a moment, then grins. ‘Your mum and dad been keepin you up to date with all the local gossip, aye?’

‘Mostly.’

We’re sitting in Powell’s black Range Rover Sport in the viewing area near the bridge control centre. My more modest hired Ford Ka is a couple of bays away. For some reason when we arranged our arguably melodramatic meeting in the middle of the bridge, I’d thought he would park at the north end and walk over while I did the same from the south, but he must have driven past me and parked here. Obviously hasn’t watched the same old Cold War movies I have. The Rangie’s engine purrs, barely audible, wafting a little warm air into the gently lit interior, all soft leather and hard wood. The wipers sweep smoothly every few seconds, giving us an intermittently good view of the twin streams of red and white lights flowing across the bridge.

‘So, Stewie,’ Powell says, making a gesture a bit like he’s opening a book with his massive but manicured-looking hands. ‘What was it you wished to discuss?’

I hate the name Stewie even more than Stu. I hated it as a kid and these days all it makes me think of is Family Guy. I like Family Guy; I just don’t like being bracketed with a melon-headed, homicidal, über camp baby with inappropriate diction. And I only asked for a chat, just to make sure everything was cool, not to ‘discuss’ anything. But still. I look him in the eye. ‘Am I okay to come back, Pow?’

Powell smiles. He’s had his teeth fixed. Dazzling. Cee Lo Green has dimmer gnashers. I’d thought at this point he might look all innocent and uncomprehending, maybe even hurt, pretending there had never been any problem, but he doesn’t. Instead he looks thoughtful, nods.

‘Aye,’ he says, drawing the word out. ‘As well to check, I suppose, eh?’ He smiles tolerantly. ‘You were never one of the daft ones, were you, Stu?’

I raise my eyebrows at this. Better than saying, One of the daft ones? I’m one of the dead fucking smart ones, you overstuffed, upgraded bouncer. Though not so smart I didn’t do something that got me run out of town, admittedly, so maybe he does have a point after all. Plus, for somebody we all confidently predicted would reach his life-peak standing outside a club rejecting people wearing the wrong sort of trainers, or being Thug Number One on a prison wing, Powell’s done pretty well for himself. So who am I to talk?

Powell nods wisely. ‘Aye, best to check. Feelings were runnin high an all that, eh?’

I just crease my mouth and nod a little. Powell’s about to say something else when his phone sounds suddenly with a snatch of Tinchy featuring Tinie. It’s ‘Gangsta?’, which probably represents high wit to Powell. The Rangie’s Bluetoothed screen wakes up with a single name I can’t make out before Powell’s hand flicks out and he stabs a button on the steering wheel, rejecting the call.

He winks at me. ‘So, frightened about coming back, were you?’

I squeeze out a tight little smile. ‘Concerned. Didn’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable.’

‘Aye, well,’ he says, sporting a fuller grin than mine. ‘I’ve had a word with Mr M, just to check you’re persona grata, you know?’

Powell looks very pleased with himself for knowing this phrase. He’s a man it’s easy to dismiss intellectually, given his looks and size and just the way he carries and expresses himself sometimes, but he always could play a lot dumber than he is, and even when he was kept back that year at school he let it be known he had done this deliberately, for his own good reasons, the better to dominate all around him.

A few people scoffed a tad too publicly at that and paid for it. Only the first one had to cough up blood and a tooth; the others suddenly found it necessary to contribute a tenner or so to Powell’s never-to-be-used-for-its-stated-purpose college fund. That was the thing about Powell, even then: he didn’t mistake fear for respect, however grudging; he knew where to draw the line, and he certainly never enjoyed violence so much he’d prioritise it above a decent payday. He might have been educationally challenged, but he was always destined to do well with a certain sort of organisational hierarchy around him.

There’s movement outside his window. Black-and-white check pattern. Jeez, it’s the cops.

Powell swivels, grins, thumbs the window down. ‘Douglas, that you?’ he asks the uniform standing in the light rain outside.

‘Evening, Mr Imrie,’ the cop says. I think I recognise the face but I’m not sure.

Powell laughs. ‘What you doin this side of the firth, Dougie? This is fuckin bandit country for you guys, is it no?’

‘Aye,’ the officer says with a sheepish grin. He nods towards the bridge control buildings. ‘Over seein the bro-in-law; he’s a rigger.’

Powell looks down at him. ‘I’d invite you in,’ he says. ‘But you’re dripping.’

‘Naw, it’s all right.’ He stares in at me. His face scrunches up a little. ‘Stewart?’ he asks.

Werrock. Dougie Werrock. That’s his name. Year or two below us. I nod. ‘Hi, Dougie. Officer Werrock.’ I glance at Powell.

‘That your Ka over there, Stewart?’ Dougie asks.

‘Aye. Hired.’

‘Saw that. Left your sidelights on, sir,’ he says, with a professional expression.

‘Did I? Thanks. Thought I heard an extra beep or two. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll be on my way shortly anyway, should think,’ I tell him, with another glance at Powell.

‘Right you are.’ Officer Werrock gives me a sort of half-nod. Powell merits a full nod and even a touch of hand to cap. ‘Nice to see you, Mr Imrie,’ Dougie says, then turns.

He’s a couple of steps away when Powell leans out and says, a little more quietly, ‘Aw, Dougie. Did we get that wee …?’

I can just about make out what Dougie says. ‘Eh? Oh. Aye. Aye, that’s all … That’s been … No, we’re fine there.’

‘Splendid. Hunky McDory. Right, Dougie. Mind how you go.’ Dougie walks off through the drizzle. Powell runs the window back up and sighs. ‘Cunt,’ he breathes, though he sounds almost affectionate.

I look at him.

‘Where were we?’ He sighs, pinches his nose. ‘Oh yes. Aye, you’re clear to land, Stewie-boy. No harm scheduled to befall. Not at our hands, anyway. You’re still not on Mr M’s Christmas list, and he’d appreciate a wee visit, maybe this evening, just so you can pay your respects, but no; you’re fine.’ He leans over and, with one enormous fist, punches me very gently on the thigh. It really is gentle, more of a push than a punch, but I can still feel the power behind it. ‘Appreciate you asking first, though,’ he tells me, winking. ‘Smart thing to do.’ He sits back, stretches a little as he looks through the just-cleared screen, as though some formality has been dealt with, before looking back at me. ‘You here long?’

‘Just the weekend.’

‘For Joe’s funeral, aye?’

‘Aye, for the funeral,’ I tell him. ‘Joe asked for me to be there, be here, himself,’ I add, still feeling I need to justify myself, or at least my presence. As soon as I say it I wish I hadn’t; it sounds like I’m pleading. I bite my lip, stop doing that, then feel like I’m starting to blush. Jeez, I tell myself. Make it all obvious, why don’t you?

Powell appears oblivious. ‘Uh-huh. You know the time’s changed?’

‘No.’

‘Still Monday, but it’s been brought forward to eleven.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Aye. Mrs M didn’t want to change the time of her keep-fit class.’

I look at him. He keeps a neutral expression, then just shrugs. He clears his throat and says, ‘Staying at your folks’, aye?’

‘Yes, I am.’ I put my hand on the door handle, then hesitate. ‘Any special time Donnie wants me at the house?’

‘Naw.’ Powell looks at his watch, which is something wide and bling and might have cost more than the Range Rover. ‘Just head on up now if ye want. I’ll no be there; stuff to do, but I’ll phone ahead. See you around, eh?’

‘Aye, see you around.’ I open the door. A few drops of rain swirl in. It looks like the sky is brightening, though that might be just the contrast with the Rangie’s tinted windows. I get out and stand looking in at Powell. ‘Thanks, Pow,’ I tell him.

He looks pleased at this, so it was probably worth the small amount of self-esteem it cost me. He winks again. ‘Say hi to your mum and dad, eh?’ he says.

‘Will do.’

The door closes with a thud so solid I could believe there’s some armour in there. For all I know, there is. Powell’s Range Rover burbles off into the evening while I walk over to my hire car.

The still-on sidelights welcome me, reproachful.

Five minutes later I’m driving into Stonemouth.

2

The quickest road from the bridge to the Murston house doesn’t go through the centre of town. I almost take the slower route anyway, just to see what’s changed over the last five years, but the traffic’s heavy enough coming off the bridge and on all sides of the big roundabout beyond, so I take the Erscliff road and end up going past the old High School. It’s still there: three tall stone storeys and a Community College now; fewer outbuildings and huts than in our time, plus a bit sprucer, and grass where the tarmac playground used to be. We were there for only a year before we were moved to the achingly modern new school at Qualcults, on the other side of town.

I first saw the Murston house from a couple of the higher classrooms in the old school. It nestled in a little hollow between the two curved tops of a small hill a couple of kilometres away, just on the outskirts of town towards the sea. What fascinated me about it then was that it was only from those two or three classrooms on the top floor of the school that you could see the place; from the other classrooms, the playground and all the various routes to school it was effectively invisible. The house sort of peeped out through the greenery crowding around it, half hidden by tall round trees bunched on either side like green eruptions of water. The trees were so dense that even when they unleafed in the autumn you hardly saw any more of the house hiding amongst them.

Sometimes in winter there was snow up there for days before any appeared on the ground in the town and the house seemed like some sort of half-mythical mountain palace. I thought it looked very grand, remote and mysterious; romantic even. A view that met with some incomprehension and even derision amongst my school pals.

‘You sure you’re no gay, Stu?’ and ‘That’s old man Murston’s crib, fuckwit,’ were two of the more informative and useful comments. And of course you could see the house from various other places too: the top deck of the number 42 bus for a start, as it passed along Steindrum Drive, as a couple of people pointed out to me, and from Justin Cutcheon’s mum’s attic window if you stood on a crate.

Callum Murston denying it was his mum and dad’s house when I pointed it out to him from Art Room Two didn’t help demystify it either.

‘Hey, Callum,’ I said, ‘isn’t that your house up there, on the hill?’

Callum squinted, already frowning aggressively, and finally saw where I was pointing. ‘Naw it’s naw,’ he said, sounding angry and looking like he was going to hit me.

Callum was never far from throwing a punch when he thought people were taking the piss. Which, to be fair, we were all prone to do, though not quite as often as Callum assumed we were. Almost any other kid in school would long since have been kicked into a less hair-trigger attitude, but Callum was a Murston (a fact we’d known since primary school meant something serious in Stonemouth), his elder brother Murdo was the biggest kid in sixth year — even if he rarely resorted to blows — and Powell Imrie — Stonemouth High School’s very own Weapon of Mass Destruction — had already sort of aligned himself with the Murston clan. That made Callum pretty much untouchable, even when he was in the wrong. Unless a teacher got involved, of course; Callum had already been suspended once for violent behaviour and was on verbal warnings almost constantly. And he really did look like he was winding up to belt me.

So I backed off immediately, smiling and holding up both hands. ‘Sorry, Cal. Chill.’

He still looked angry but he let me walk away.

Just another Callum Murston WTF? moment.

By that time I’d come to accept that the place was the Murston family gaff and I just assumed he was denying it to fuck with me or because he was oddly embarrassed at coming from what was obviously a very large house, but it turned out later he honestly didn’t recognise it from that angle, and his in-head sat-nav couldn’t do the maths required to work it out. Callum never was the sharpest chiv in the amnesty box.

All the same, it was largely because of the house glimpsed through the trees that I persevered in getting to know Callum and becoming one of his friends, and it was largely through Callum — and the just-deceased Joe — that I got to know the rest of the family: Mr M himself (a bit), Mrs M (a slighter bit), Murdo (a bit more), Fraser and Norrie, the twins from the year below (fairly well) and, of course, Ellie. And Grier, her kid sister; I got to know her too and we even became sort of friends. But Ellie, mostly. Ellie more than all the rest, Ellie more than anybody ever, until I fucked it all up.

The cloud is clearing a little as I swing the Ka between the tall, ornate gateposts of the Murston house, high on the hill. It’s called Hill House, so no prizes for imagination there. A still-clinging haze to the east obscures the North Sea, and to the west the clouds glow yellow-orange and hide the north-eastern tip of the Cairngorms. The wrought-iron gates stay open these days, though they are electric and there is an intercom. The driveway snakes down through a broad slope of striped lawn studded with ornamental bushes and life-size statues of stags. I park between a sleekly silver four-door AMG Merc and a spanking-new green Range Rover.

The triple garage I remember has been joined by an added-on-looking fourth. There’s a wee boxy Japanese van parked outside it. The van’s filled with equipment and a compressor of some sort, hoses snaking into the open garage doorway. There’s a big foamy wet patch on the forecourt and inside there’s a monstrous pick-up truck. Its bonnet — hood — is as high as my shoulders. The badge says it’s a Dodge. The machine is truly vast; the new garage is wider and taller than the other three, as if built to contain the thing. The truck is gleaming: all massive chrome bull bars and deep, sparkling, flaked crimson paint with a rack of extra lights on a bar across the roof. Inside the four-door cab I can just see a Confederate flag stretched across the back. A guy in blue overalls appears from behind the truck and comes out, holding a duster. He frowns, then grins when he sees me. It’s Stevie Ross, from the year above me at school.

‘Hiya, stranger,’ he says, and comes up and shakes my hand. There’s some fast catching up — yes, me doing okay, thanks, him with this cleaning business, still playing in the band at weekends — and then I ask if the mega pick-up is Donald’s new toy or one of the boys’.

‘Nah, this was Callum’s,’ Stevie says, crossing his arms and staring at the thing. The registration plate reads RE8E1. Stevie looks proud and sort of reverent at the same time. ‘Hasnae moved for two years, apart from me pulling it out to clean it every few months and then rolling it back in again.’ He frowns at me. ‘You know about Callum, eh?’

‘Off the bridge,’ I say, nodding.

‘Aye,’ he says, voice a little quieter. ‘Well, this was his. This is what he left sitting on the bridge, night he jumped. Mr M had it brought up here, built this new garage for it. Keeps it nice.’ He nods approvingly. He glances back at the house, looks at me. ‘You okay to be here, aye?’

‘Yeah. Yeah; come to pay my respects.’

He looks at his watch. ‘Aye, well. Time to go. Got a stretch limo to clean for Party Wagons.’ He shakes his head. ‘Ye wouldnae believe the mess a bunch of fourteen-year-old girls can leave one of those things in.’

‘Don’t envy you.’

‘Aye, well, still; it’s dependable work. Every other fucker’s economising. Never mind. Good to see you, Stewart.’

‘You too.’ I leave him packing up and go to the front door.

A young Asian woman I don’t recognise answers the bell and shows me into the remaining conservatory. There used to be two; the other one was knocked down to make room for the new wing, sometime around the Millennium. Mr Murston will be with me shortly.

The conservatory is big, full of cane furniture with Burberry cushions. Two gleaming, life-size ceramic cheetahs stand guard at the double doors from the house. The conservatory looks out southwest across a terrace with a giant trampoline to one side and some wrought-iron furniture. The trampoline has lots of brown leaves on it. The table holds a collapsed giant parasol, green and white. The trees surrounding the house are mostly turning yellow, orange and red. Beyond, down in the haze, I can just make out a sliver of the town. I stand looking at it for a while. I can hear a radio or iPod playing pop somewhere in the house. I listen for some sounds from the erratic population of wee yappy dogs Mrs M has always favoured, but I can’t hear them.

After a few minutes I start to suspect I’m being put in my place by being made to wait, so I sit down, and wait. I pull out the iPhone. Normally I’d play a game or check emails, but all I do is Tweet where I am and put the phone away. Even that’s just a sort of residual paranoia; despite an initial burst of enthusiasm about a year or two ago, I never really got into Tweeting. I’ve taken it up again this weekend only as a security measure because I reckon there’s a chance, however slim, that convincing some bad guys who might wish to do you harm that, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, people know exactly where you are/where you were last seen alive (you always assume the extreme when you’re gaming these things in your head) will somehow put them off. Seems a bit ridiculous now, but there you go.

I sit, trying to identify the song playing frustratingly quietly in some other part of the house. It’s something really old; KLF possibly. The coffee table in front of me has copies of Vogue, Angling and Game, Fore! and Scottish Country Life, though they all look unread. I open a couple and they still have the insert flyers inside. A hefty pair of binoculars sits on a windowsill.

Before I ever got to know the Murstons or got invited to their house, a gang of us set off on an expedition to check the place out one sunny Sunday afternoon. There was me, Dom Lennot, Al Dunn, Wee Malky and Bodie Ferguson. We were almost but not quite past the age of playing soldiers, and we might have been indulging in an outdoor version of Laser Quest (the town’s own indoor arena, in an old bingo hall that had once been a cinema, had opened and closed within a year), or Paintball Frenzy (we were too young to use the real thing, on a farm near Finlassen) or possibly we were re-enacting some combat game. I wasn’t allowed any computer games at home at the time so I got to play only on other kids’ machines, but maybe it was Call of Duty, if that existed at the time, so perhaps we were US Special Forces moving stealthily in on a Taliban leader’s compound. Though, equally likely, we were mujahedin sneaking up on a US Marine base — we were kind of promiscuous that way.

Around the house were the sheltering trees, themselves surrounded by broad clumps of gorse and broom and, a little further down, tilted meadows where sometimes horses and sheep grazed. Lower down the hillside, beyond a straggled line of trees, lay the long, wavily manicured fairways of Jamphside Golf Club. We argued about whether to avoid the course altogether — it was only the second-most exclusive club in the area, but it was the most forbidding, surrounded by fences and great thickets of jaggy whin and bramble, fiercely patrolled by some very humourless and proprietorial ground staff. Having the effrontery to cross its sculpted, obsessively tended greens was not like louping across the scruffier municipal course down by the firth or even braving the dunes, gorse and sands of Olness, the older links course on the coast, cheerily pretending obliviousness to any distant yells from annoyed golfers. Still, we decided to go for it, crossing at what we were assured by Wee Malky was the narrowest part of the course — his granda had been a green-keeper so he claimed local knowledge.

We found a way over a fence using a handy tree, used a sort of tunnel through the whin that was probably a deer route and got to the edge of the twelfth fairway to find there was only one group of golfers within sight, heading away from us. We’d probably have been fine except that Dom, who always had been one of the class bampots, suddenly decided it’d be the height of wit to deposit what he described as ‘a big steamin tolley’ down the nearest hole (which happened to be the eleventh). The rest of us, in our twelve-to-thirteen-year-old wisdom, had thought Dom had grown out of this sort of frankly childish nonsense, but obviously not. Dom spent most of his time indoors playing computer games so maybe all the fresh air had gone to his head.

‘Aw, Dom, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Dinnae be fucking daft, man!’

‘I am not staying to witness this!’

‘You’ll get the jail!’

‘Fuck this.’

‘Naw, ah am. Ah’m drappin one in that hole, so ah am. An youse are comin wi me.’

That would be, in order: me, Al, Ferg, Wee Malky, me again and then Dom talking there.

Dom was the biggest, bravest and most fighty of us, and so when he said we were coming with him we would naturally tend to do as we were told. However, I’d put on a significant growth spurt that summer and I’d beaten Dom in an impromptu wrestling match in his garden the day before, and while wrestling never had counted as a definitive skill when it came to settling seniority in a bunch of Stonemouth kids — not the way a proper fight did — it still meant something.

It was a fluid kind of time around then anyway; fights — whether in the playground or in parks or waste ground after school — were starting to go out of fashion, as some of us decided it was a rough and uncivilised way to decide who was top dog. A few radicals even suggested that the defining trait ought to be who had the best exam results, but that was obviously taking things too far so we’d sort of opted for whoever was most cool, and fighting was just starting to look a bit uncool. Anyway, I was the only one who didn’t go with the main squad towards the eleventh green, up on a slight rise to our left. I just jogged off for the shelter of the long rough and whin on the far side of the fairway, shaking my head. Dom looked like he was about to run after me and tackle me, but we already knew I was a faster runner than he was, so he stayed where he was. The rest stayed too.

‘You’re fuckin dead, Gilmour!’ Dom shouted after me.

‘Aw, Stu, dinnae. Come on.’ That was Al.

‘You’re such an only child, Stewart!’ Ferg yelled.

‘You’ll get the jail!’ (Wee Malky, confusingly.)

And so I was able to watch from the perfect cover of a little whin-covered hillock as the next group of golfers appeared over the rise just as Dom got his trousers down and started squatting over the hole. Al was holding the pin.

The four golfers stood open-mouthed for a moment, then yelled, abandoned their bags and charged. Worse, there was a pair of green keepers in a sort of wee, fat-tyred flatbed truck just behind and to one side of the group of golfers. The wee truck overtook the golfers before they made the green.

Dom was no problem; he was still trying to get his trousers back up, and fell on his face when he tried to run. The greenkeepers shot past him and raced after the rest of the gang. They’d made the elementary mistake of keeping together and running back the way we’d come, rather than splitting up, so while they made it as far as the gap in the whin and piled into it with the sort of alacrity rats up drainpipes could only dream of, the greenkeepers were right behind them. They caught Wee Malky by the ankles and dragged him straight back out again. The fastest of the pursuing golfers held the now howling Wee Malky while the two greenkeepers disappeared into the deer run; you could watch their progress by the line of shaking whin bushes. Two of the other golfers were sitting on a raging and shouting Dom, just off the green. One of them was skelping him across his still-naked bum with a golf glove. Tad fruitily, I thought. I saw Ferg and Al make it as far as the fence; the green-keepers caught them while they were frantically trying to climb it.

Wee Malky wriggled free and made a dash for the same gap in the whins he’d already been pulled out of, but fast — and desperate — though he was, his wee legs couldn’t outrun the long adult strides of the golfer who’d caught him; he was scooped off the grass and held firmly, wriggling and wailing, against the guy’s chest. I’ve thought back on that final, minor detail of the whole sorry adventure many times since then, and seem to remember that there was something in equal parts heroic and hopeless in Wee Malky’s stubborn refusal to accept he’d been caught, and in his attempt to get away a second time; something somehow life-affirming but ultimately tragic about his struggle to escape his fate.

But that’s probably just a kind of morbid sentimentality, the effect of knowing what would happen on the overgrown fringes of the Ancraime estate, in the sweaty height of high summer, a few years later. At the time, no matter what I like to think I remember, it probably meant nothing special at all.

I slipped away through the bracken, heading uphill for the trees and the meadow, careful to move with as little disturbance as possible, but I was never in any real danger. I heard distant yelling, adult and kid, but it was faint. There could be some blowback because of this — Dom in particular might want to exact some retribution for my abandoning ship — but I thought I’d been sensible and they’d been stupid and, what with my new-found semi-parity in the pecking order, it didn’t bother me too much. I’d got away, it was a fucking lovely day, and I might finally even get to see something more of the fabled Murston house.

Beyond the line of trees, the steep meadow led up into the fields and then the gardens of the house, though the building itself was still unseen, hidden by the undulations of the hill.

I saw the girl riding the horse then; a brief, lithe vision on a blond horse at a half-trot, moving daintily across the sunlit higher field. The girl gave a little kick, the horse picked up speed and they jumped a small hedge, disappearing.

I’d caught only a glimpse of her, but she’d been beautiful: graceful, long legs and a serene face on a slender neck, her hair either short or gathered up under her riding hat.

It was Ellie, I think. When I mentioned this to her years later she wasn’t so sure, and said sometimes her friends came and rode her ponies — not horses, at the time — so she couldn’t be certain. But I’m sure it was her. Probably. I guess I’d heard of her by this time but I don’t think I’d seen her, even around town. Both the Murston girls were sent to the Stonemouth Girls’ Academy rather than have to rough it with their brothers in the High School, so this was quite possible. Anyway, seeing her there only added to the mystique of the half-hidden house on the hill and made me all the more determined finally to cop a glimpse of it close up.

So I climbed up a steep grass slope at the side of the meadow, crossed the field and a barbed-wire fence, then worked my way up through the tangle of whin, broom and bramble to the trees. I kept looking for the girl on the horse but I didn’t see her again.

I saw the house, at last, from halfway up a tree.

It was a little disappointing, frankly, after all the build-up I’d given it: just a big house with lots of garages and outhouses, not especially old, maybe sixties vintage, possibly originally a bungalow but with lots of big dormers and Veluxes and various bits added on: two conservatories and a substantial structure along one side of the house, which was all windows and blinds and white columns. Some of the blinds were raised to show there was a swimming pool inside. A couple of cars were parked outside a triple garage; a winding slope of drive led through a front garden of lawn and trimmed shrubs to two tall, ornate gateposts on the skyline, the black wroughtiron gates forming the only gap in a high stone wall.

I looked back to the house, and saw that a man in an upstairs room was watching me through a big pair of binoculars. I froze, then grinned, waved and got down out of the tree as smartly as I could. I ran down the hill, expecting to hear dogs yowling after me. I skirted the perimeter of the golf course, not daring to cross it, and got wet up to my knees crossing the Kinnis Burn before achieving the relative safety of the play park by the Meriston Road Recycling Centre. I took a long route home to help everything dry off and was back in time for tea.

At school the following morning the whole thing had been spun into a daring raid on a repressive bastion of adult privilege and Dom had merely been exposing his naked behind to the dozen or so men — who’d finally caught them after a long chase — to express his contempt for a prescriptive society and its piffling rules. The real story had leaked, of course, and was already being sniggered over throughout the school, but such was the public line.

The guys got off with a caution eventually, though Dom was singled out for the evil eye by the cop delivering the finger-wagging and told We’re On To You, Laddie.

‘Mr Murston says to see you now,’ a female voice says, and I follow the Asian girl through the house.

‘I’m Stewart,’ I tell her as the pop music gets gradually louder (Now Playing: Prince & the New Power Generation — more early nineties stuff). ‘And you are …?’ I ask her. (I’m opposed to all this nameless servant shit.)

‘Maria,’ the girl says, opening the door to the pool/fitness suite annexe with all the windows and blinds and white Greco-Roman columns. She’s gone before I can say Nice to meet you, and I’m confronted with Donnie Murston, the not yet greying head of the Murston clan, dressed in baggy shorts and a torn-sleeveless Massive Attack T-shirt. He’s stomping around on a giant mat with flashing coloured splodges all over it like some demented version of Twister, working out to what looks like some weird knock-off version of Dance Challenge, facing the biggest plasma screen I’ve ever seen and trying to follow the steps of a dancing pink dragon. The tiny wee man from Paisley Park is crooning something about how money don’t matter tonight while Mr M tries to synch his shapes. This must just be coincidence; I never had the Don down as an ironicist.

He glances at me. ‘Aye. It’s yourself, Stewart.’

Hard to argue with that. I nod, though he isn’t looking at me. ‘Evening, Mr M.’

‘Too feart to call me Donald these days, eh, Stewart?’

Five years ago I’d have been all defensive or denying after a remark like that, talking away and saying Certainly not, just been a while, not wanting to take anything for granted, you know… or gone the other way and said Hell, yeah, utterly terrified; you’d be able to hear my knees knocking if the music wasn’t so loud. Now I’m the wrong side of twenty-five — if only just — so I’m practically grizzled. Anyway I know when to shut up and say nothing. So that’s what I do. Mustn’t forget I’m here on sufferance, to bend the knee, kiss the ring, whatever. All the same, I smile a little, just to show I’m not that intimidated, if he looks at me.

After a little while, though, when he still doesn’t look at me or say anything, I say, ‘So how are you, Donald?’

He holds up one hand to me, wordlessly concentrating on his steps as the song comes to its end. When it stops he taps a small black circle in the corner of the mat, freezing the screen and pausing the next song before it can start. He turns to me, grabs a fluffy white towel from the back of a white leather recliner. ‘Bearing up, Stewart. We’ll all miss the old guy.’

‘Aye, well, I was sorry to hear. He had a—’

‘Still, we all have our time, don’t we?’ he says.

‘I suppose,’ I say.

Mr M nods, and inspects me, taking his time to look me down and up as he towels off round his face and neck. Mr M is fifty or so but in reasonable shape for a man of his age; I’m guessing he still swims in the pool and uses all the gym gear cluttering this end of the pool complex. He’s got the dark-sand hair of most of the Murstons, a pale complexion and big dark brown eyes (though not as big and brown as Ellie’s). Stubby nose, broken from his days as a boxer in the Youth Club. Full lips (though not as full as — well, you get the idea). Bit of a barrel chest: long back, short legs. He doesn’t look that menacing, but there you go; doesn’t wear a black hat, either.

The Murstons were poor farmers just two generations ago, then some arguably (depends who you talk to) shady deals with other farmers in the area made them not-so-poor farmers. Their real fortune came from timber first, then peat. Now they have a thriving road haulage business and an extensive regional property portfolio. The machine harvesting of peat in the great bogs that start twenty kilometres to the north-west still represent the family’s main business. In theory.

He nods, inspection finished. ‘Done all right for yourself, Stewart?’

‘I—’ I begin.

‘Or just putting on an act, eh, dressing up?’

The breath I was going to use to speak sort of collapses out of me, but I smile as tolerantly as I can. ‘I’m doing okay.’

‘What is it you do, anyway?’

‘Lighting.’

‘Lighting?’ He frowns. At this point, people usually ask whether I mean stage lighting, or selling table lamps in B&Q. Donald, however, just keeps frowning.

‘Buildings,’ I tell him. ‘Commercial, public; some industrial. Occasional private commission. Exteriors, mostly.’

‘Lighting,’ he says. He does not look especially impressed.

‘Aye, lighting.’ The look he’s giving me, I’m starting to get unimpressed with it myself.

His eyes narrow a little. ‘How’d art school lead to that?’

‘Pretty much directly,’ I tell him. ‘I was sort of headhunted, after my degree show.’

‘Uh-huh. Where you based?’

‘London. Well, in theory. I’m rarely there. It’s an international consultancy.’ He’s still just staring at me. I don’t know if that’s contempt in his eyes or indifference. Always found it difficult to read Donald. ‘Just been made a partner,’ I tell him. ‘The youngest.’ Still no reaction. ‘Youngest ever,’ I add. Not that the firm’s really old; it only goes back to the seventies.

‘Aye, very nice,’ he says, in that manner that implies that what he really means is, Well done getting away with it so far, ya chancer.

I grin. Partner. This happened just last week and it’s still sinking in. The only people I’ve told here in Stonemouth are my mum and dad, by phone the evening I heard, and I’ve sworn them to secrecy. Fucking partner. I thought I’d be ancient by the time that happened. Fucking cool for me. I grin again. ‘Keeps the wolf from the door, Donald.’

He nods again, sucking his lips in. ‘I think I prefer “Mr M”,’ he tells me. I want to say that he smiles, but really he’s just revealing his teeth. He’s had his Hollywoodised, too. Only slightly frightening. ‘If that’s all right with you,’ he continues, throwing the towel back onto the recliner and crossing his arms. ‘Let’s not pretend everything’s hunky fuckin dory, eh? Or you’re still always welcome in this house, eh, Stewart? Not after what you did,’ he says.

Shit. That turned nasty bewilderingly quickly. I take a deep breath. ‘For whatever it’s worth, Mr M, I’m sorry,’ I tell him.

‘Uh-huh. Well, I’ll tell you straight, son: if it was up to me you still wouldn’t be back here. Be another five years, maybe more, before I’d be happy you showing your face around here.’

What would it be worth to tell him Fuck You; this is my home town too and I’ll come back any time I fucking want?

I’d be lucky to make it out of town alive. Well, a slight exaggeration, I suppose; I’d be lucky to make it out of town with a working pair of kneecaps, or hands that would ever play the violin again (not that I can now, but you know what I mean). Anyway, the sad thing is that he does have a point.

I don’t say anything, just look down a little, staring at the giant beetle on his T-shirt, and nod thoughtfully. I could say I’m sorry again, but I’ve already said it once. Wouldn’t want to devalue the sentiment.

‘You’ve Mrs M to thank for bein here,’ he tells me. ‘Put in a good word for you. Think yourself lucky I listen to her and no the boys.’

The tiniest frisson of hope — excitement, even — runs through me. Mrs Murston never really gave a damn about me either way, but she’s butter in her eldest daughter’s hands, so more likely the appeal for clemency came from Ellie, not Mrs M herself. It’s worth hoping so, anyway.

‘How is Ellie?’

Donald puts his head back, his expression cold. ‘How is Ellie?’ he repeats. I’ve got a quite different feeling running through my guts now. That repeating-what-the-other-person’s-just-said thing is not a good sign with Mr M. Fuck, why did I ask that?

‘She’s none of your fucking business, that’s how she is,’ he says. His voice is a grinding monotone, like two heavy plates of glass sliding over each other. He glances at the double doors leading back into the rest of the house. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

I look down at the floor, nod. Even less point saying any further Sorries, now. ‘Thanks for seeing me, Mr M,’ I mumble, and turn, walk.

As I draw level with the glazed ceramic cheetahs, he says, ‘Just here for the weekend.’ He says it like that; if there’s a question mark in there, I’m not hearing it.

‘Due to leave Tuesday morning,’ I tell him.

His eyes narrow just a fraction more. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘Good.’ He turns and stamps on the corner of the dancing mat like he’s squashing an insect the size of a locust. The paused dragon on the plasma jerks into life.

I leave to the strains of early Take That. I don’t see Maria. By the side of the front door there’s a big photo of the late Callum, framed in black. I didn’t notice it on the way in. Callum — big-boned, prominent jaw and brow, with a shaved-sides haircut uncomfortably close to a mullet and wearing a padded check shirt that looks like it’s been ironed — stares out at me with a sort of leery scowl.

I let myself out.

Somewhere in the house, a tiny-sounding dog is barking hysterically.

3

It’s only ten minutes from Hill House to my mum and dad’s. I like driving the wee Ka, even though it does seem a bit small now; I passed my test in one of these all those years ago and it’s sort of nostalgic.

I say all those years; it’s eight going on nine, but while that feels like half my proper conscious life — you’re not fully formed when you’re a kid, are you? — it’s starting to feel like not all that long really. Maybe this is because I spend a lot of time around older people. Secretaries and office juniors aside, the other guys in the firm are all senior to me. Anyway, it’s funny how your perspective changes as you age.

There are some frankly embarrassing tears from my mum when I get to my parents’ place, and a fairly long hug from my dad. I am heartily congratulated on my promotion to partner level, though I make clear it’s just junior partner level, not equity. My folks — Al and Morven — live in Nisk, just outside the old town, in a granite semi somewhere between modest and comfortably off, on a leafy street largely the territory of Mercs and BMWs. Dad always used to drive a Saab — for the engineering, apparently — but these days he’s an Audi man.

‘And what have you brought, eh? Something flash, eh?’ he asks, going to the lounge windows to see what’s in the driveway, once things have settled down a bit and the tears and hugs are out of the way. Mum’s gone to clatter some tea and cakes out of the kitchen, still sniffing (it’s not as though they haven’t seen me since I left; they’ve been to London loads over the last five years and they stayed in my flat this summer when they were flying out to Orlando). ‘Oh,’ Dad says, when he sees the boring blue Ka. He looks at me. ‘You gone all green or something?’

‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘Thought I’d save the planet personally so you guys don’t have to.’

Actually I did think of hiring something bigger at the airport, something people would be impressed with as I swept into town, and I was all pumped to get a Mondeo at least, maybe even a Jag or something, but then I thought that might look a bit too flash in the circumstances. I’m not really rich yet, though I get to live like I’m rich, on expenses and with a mortgage on the flat in Stepney. Plus there’s that thing about flaunting it; people are still a bit old-fashioned that way up here, despite everything. Still a bit old-fashioned about a lot of things, frankly. Plus I had to think about what people like the Murstons might think if I looked like I was rubbing their noses in how I’d landed on my feet after getting run out of town. Mr M especially. Five years ago this would never have occurred to me, but I’m mature now.

Anyway, when I landed at Dyce this afternoon, the Ka is what I went for. Aberdeen looked even bigger from the air than I remembered, and you could see the line of the new bypass. Dyce was the usual cramped chaos, and very helicoptery.

Dad just makes that sort of huffing, snorting sound he does, which is his equivalent of ‘Aye, right.’ He’s a ginge, like me, though he’s a good bit shorter, sort of bulkier, and his eyes are brown, not green like mine. His hair’s gone darker and straighter over the years and he keeps it shorter than he used to. Beginning to lose it on top, but then what do you expect in your forties?

‘Ah well, you’ll save money on petrol, eh?’ he concedes, dropping himself into a chair. He looks me in the eye, glances at the door to the hall and drops his voice slightly. ‘You all right to come back, aye?’

‘Met with Powell Imrie. Already been to see Donald,’ I tell him. ‘Reckon I’ll get out of town alive.’

He still looks serious. ‘They were both okay?’

‘Powell was fine. Donald was a bit, well, like Donald. But okay.’

Dad nods. Another kitchen-ward glance, voice dropping a little again. ‘I told Mike you might be coming back for the funeral,’ he says quietly. ‘He’s been saying for a while it was probably okay. Said if there was any trouble to give him a call, eh? Or one of his boys.’ Mike MacAvett is the other Daddy in town. Though when Al — my dad — says ‘his boys’ he doesn’t mean either of Mike Mac’s sons. On the other hand, he doesn’t mean proper, full-on, tooled-up, Mafia-style gangsters, either. We’re not at that point here, not yet, anyway. All a bit more subtle and low-key than that. The Murstons and Mike Mac run their businesses with the minimum of fuss, and no guns. They have the weaponry, but they’ve broken it out only twice in the last fifteen years, as far as I know, when a couple of gangs from Aberdeen and Glasgow thought they might muscle their way in towards what they mistakenly thought looked like easy pickings amongst us hicks up here.

Didn’t work; faced with two long-entrenched and now armed concerns working in frankly startlingly close cooperation with the local cops, they quickly disappeared. Mostly they quickly disappeared straight back down the A90, the way they’d come, but there were strong, believable rumours that a couple went over the side of deepsea trawlers somewhere between the Hebrides and Iceland, or into a fishmeal plant, or beneath multiple layers of replaced rock in worked-out, open-cast coal mines, at least one of these unfortunates meeting their end after some very painful attention from Fraser Murston, who, allegedly, had turned out to be quite creative in the unpleasantness-inflicting department.

Anyway, if you’re talking rival families, the MacAvetts are the Vauxhall to the Murstons’ Ford. Or the Celtic to their Rangers or something … Though not in a religious way; I think they’re both Prods, technically. But you know what I mean.

I say, ‘Thanks, Al,’ though it doesn’t mean too much.

Mike MacAvett and his boys wouldn’t be able to save me from Powell Imrie and associates if the word went out. Wouldn’t want to, either: not enough in it. Mike MacAvett would step between Donald and a subject of his righteous ire only for something truly important and worthwhile that promised a serious pay-off at the end, not just to protect a guy who dug his own hole years ago, even if he is the son of his oldest friend. Business, and all that. And keeping the peace, frankly, too; not threatening a whole web of mutually beneficial arrangements by attacking each other and — if things get really out of hand — making it impossible for the cops to keep on turning a blind eye.

Whatever. Dad sits back, relaxes. He looks at me properly. ‘Lookin well. You doin all right? What you driving? You got a car yet?’

And with that we’re safely into small-talk, largely about what I do and don’t possess. I don’t possess a car, for example, which Dad seems to think is almost sacrilegious. I keep telling him I don’t need one in London. Dad thinks it’s political and I’m about to go and start hugging trees and blowing up nuclear power stations or refineries or something. He’s worked all his life in oil — he’s harbourmaster at the new docks these days, where the rig supply and support ships hang out — and so he’s sort of defensive on the subject, but at least not an outright denier.

Mum comes in with a big tray and asks about whether I’m happy, and about girls. I sit holding my favourite old SpongeBob SquarePants mug — I mean, really? — and think about saying something like, They’re all shaved these days, Mum. Pubic hair’s an endangered species amongst girls my age, did you know that? But that would be a bit weird. And probably wouldn’t even shock Mum anyway. Mum’s Dad’s age, looks a bit boho in jeans and a long flowing top (she’s an art teacher, so, fair enough). Barefoot, as she usually is round the house. She’s dark blonde, still mostly slim, though getting heavier as the years plod on. I always forget she’s got really good tits for a woman her age. I used to waver between being proud she’s still good-looking and not being able to wait for her to stop being a MILF, as my leering pals used to assure me she was. She’s probably just about dropped off that radar screen now.

I tell her I’m not involved with anybody long-term at present; too busy.

‘What about that Zoraiya lass? She seemed nice.’

Zoraiya was the Iranian girl I was seeing on and off during the summer: trainee lawyer. ‘She was nice. Still is.’ I shrug. ‘We’ve just gone in different directions.’ I smile big. ‘As you do.’

She smiles too. ‘Good to have you back, son.’

‘Good to be back, Mum.’

‘Aye,’ Dad says.

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 CO 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.