ALL ACROSS Edinburgh, tourists party. Local pubs are jammed. Nightclubs are heaving. Thousands walked these streets with torches burning just a few days ago for the fire festival. It’s enough to give a girl a complex. Police sealed off the city centre for Hogmanay earlier today. To try and get home Dot has to get past barriers without a pass. She uses her – lady with a baby – routine. Pushes her stomach right out. It is enough. People’s niceness is so exploitable. There are skaters at Winter Wonderland. A brightly lit wheel. Fairground rides cast brightly coloured tracers of light across the sky behind them. The German market wants an arm and a leg for a fucking doughnut. Smells good though. She’d consider it. Here is my arm. Here is my leg. Please can you feed me your doughnut? There is a maze of Christmas trees and when she looks down, all she can see is the top of bobbled hats making their way through pines. There will be kissing at the bells. All the uglies are out and hopeful. Norway donated an extra-large Christmas tree to the Mound. There’s not an empty hotel room in town. A choir sings Bach and Handel up at St Giles’. There is cheering out on the street. There is dancing. People meet and fall in love. Scuffles break out. They drink far too much. All of life is happening. A girl holds onto her friend’s hands and the two of them spin around. A fairground trails all the way along East End of Princes Street Gardens. There is a fairground ride called the Hammer lit up and swinging with people screaming on it and her favourite is a gravity wheel that tilts onto its side – there are swings high up above the buildings that spin out like a skirt and there is a smell of perfume and candyfloss. The big bands are setting up in the next section of gardens where there is a bandstand and fans wait for the music to start. Fireworks are being safety-checked one last time before they are lit up and send a cascade of light over the Castle Rock.

Silent drums ripple through city catacombs.

Revellers interrupting the murdered, the lost and the damned, the homeless or the cold and hungry, the addicted – those weary of living this life. These are Dot’s people – if there have ever been any to call her own. It’s where she comes from. Still is. Always will be. It’s no wonder she has never fitted in.

Dot slips off the High Street.

Down the close.