Politely regretful, he said that he had to change buses now, he was going all the way to Motherwell. Grace nodded and raised a white-gloved hand in farewell when he got off, exchanging a deep look with the black glass of the window trailed across with silver raindrops. She was too robust, she thought, to think of the river: she wasn’t the sort. The bus ran along their street and past the house, the stop was just beyond it. And from the bus window as she passed she saw someone crumpled into their doorway where it was recessed beside the shop, sunk onto the step with his hood pulled over his face – which was turned away out of the rain, against the grubby white PVC of the door. One of the local winos they sometimes invited in and fed? Hurrying back along the street, hunting for her key in her bag, she was glad in any case of the distraction. And when she saw that it was Sandy, asleep, or with his eyes closed at least in some long martyred forbearance, beautiful as a saint, she was weak for a moment with her sense of the blessing she’d have forfeited if she hadn’t come home early, or if she’d drowned herself, or brought back the boy from the bus. She hardly dared speak to him, to rouse him.

— Sandy?

The long grey eyes flicked open. — Christ, Gracie, where’ve you been? This is a shithole. I’ve been here for fucking hours, since the pubs closed. And the pub was a shithole too.

She helped him up, supporting him as anxiously as if he were lame, unlocking the door and easing him over the threshold: leaning on her heavily on their way upstairs, he stank of beer and whisky. — My darling I’m so sorry, she mourned, pushing the hair back from his fine temple, kissing it. — I forgot to charge my phone, I thought it didn’t matter. But what are you doing here?

He groaned. — I needed you.

— If only I’d known! If only you’d told me!

— I have to talk to you. Good god, Grace, what do you look like?

She turned full circle for him on the stained carpet in the sitting room. — Aren’t I queenly?

Sandy only flicked his glance once around the room’s squalor – sleeping bags, tea mugs, trainers, the landlord’s orange furniture, foil trays of half-eaten takeaway: beneath his notice, though his nostrils tightened at the smell. — Drag queenly, maybe.

— Wife at a Masonic Ladies’ Night who’s had a few too many?

— And fallen into the fishpond. You’re soaking, really. Did you swim?