Grace bought new clothes from a charity shop in the Great Western Road, wore them to a party with green high heels: a stiff fitted dress of green and gold brocade, white fake-fur stole, long white kid gloves. She thought she looked like a queen in exile. At first she was jubilant at the party, circulating regally, dancing with abandon – boys kissed her hand, obediently they knelt before her: she was having fun. Then the night performed its bleak new trick of turning inside out, revealing itself as vacant. Other people’s pleasures receded to a noise in her ears, the ocean in a shell. Too much drink, too much coke, she told herself sternly: beyond a certain point these ushered in a sobriety more dreadful than anything in the daytime. Letting herself out of the party when no one was looking, she stepped alone into the street, the drenching rain welcome. She was looking for a taxi but the night bus came first. There was almost no one on it – too early for the late all-night crowd – but she took a seat beside a young man whose short hair was shaved raw against a sinewy, unhappy neck. He scalded with colour and stared out the window to avoid her. Putting her head on his shoulder, she asked him to cheer her up; he eased from underneath her, complained that she was soaking him. The fur stole was sodden, ruined. What did she have to be sorry about anyway, he asked, apart from the weather?

— I want to talk like you, she said. — I love your voice. I cannae do that. I want to belong to something, somewhere.

He said that talking was easy, in fact it was the only thing he’d ever done well at school. — You see, you’re funny, she said. — I want to be funny again, but I’ve lost my sense of humour. My dad died recently, that’s the thing. He was the funny one. We were very close. How would you say that? We were gey close. He was a guid man. We’ll no see his like again.

He said he knew what she was going through, his dad had died too, when he was a boy. — It’s common, I know that, Grace said. — Nothing to make a fuss about. But come home with me, won’t you? I’m afraid to be alone, I’m too sad.