— I can’t swim, remember? Grace’s laughing face was fresh and pink and blotched with cold, rain was caught in the frizz of her hair. Cheerfully she wrung out a handful of her skirt. — This is just Glasgow, it rains here. I am soaked, aren’t I? And so are you. We’d better change out of our wet things; you’re shivering. Come into my room, it’s nicer. Well, not much nicer.

She kicked off her heels and, as she preceded him down a dank passage, reached up behind her, between her shoulder blades, for her zip; crossing the threshold of her room, switching on a light, she stepped out of the wet dress in one movement, trampling it underfoot, and was naked underneath – her nakedness as frank and unselfconscious, without mystique, as when she and Sandy were children paddling together at the seaside. Only now she wasn’t a child – with her lean young breasts like an athlete’s, strong goosefleshed haunches, scribble of wiry pubic hair. Visibly Sandy winced.

— Just let’s talk, he said. — I want to talk.

— But let’s talk in bed, darling. Let’s get warm. It’s all right: we’re like cousins, aren’t we? We don’t have to do anything.

He hesitated, but the room was disgusting, there was nowhere else for him to sleep. With slow fastidiousness and unsteady fingers, Sandy unbuttoned his shirt, hair hanging forward across his frown, delicately conscious of his exposure as Grace hadn’t been of hers. Clutching the pillow, she drank in the glamorous sight of him: he was a god fallen into her room, turning away to tug at his belt, unzip, step out of his trousers, keep on his underpants. He put the lamp out and then they faced each other under the duvet, not touching, in a darkness smudged with light from the street. She asked him lovingly what he wanted to talk about. — Christ knows, Sandy said gloomily. — I can’t remember now. Just everything. The band. Fucking Alex messing up.

— I know, Grace said soothingly. — Everyone’s upset.

— I mean, how crass is he? After what happened — how could he do this to you? And Izzy and Christine. He never thinks of anyone else.

— Well, he hasn’t strictly speaking done it to me. Because I don’t mind.

Grace knew Sandy’s eternal resentment of his father: touching his cheekbone with her fingertips, she willed her own calm insight to pass into him, with its capacious forgiveness. — My mum’s always carried a bit of a torch for Alex.

— But it’s too awful, at their age.

— When we’re that age, we’ll probably still want things.

She guessed that Sandy didn’t think much about growing old. — You’re the wonder, she said. — What you are is so amazing.

— He’s never once listened to my music.

— It doesn’t matter.