An Edinburgh summer is usually a skittery, lying, drunk, untrustworthy foe – her legs are always spread – elsewhere. She is elusive and unreliable, a total fucking pisshead. The next day (for months) she pretends she’s still far too poorly to make an appearance.

Locals loathe the erratic and often absent entirely – Edinburgh summer.

Talk about her endlessly – will she, or won’t she?

Look out windows expectantly each morning.

They buy flower seeds just in case.

Resentfully, they keep out all items of their winter wardrobe.

She loves all the anticipation, doesn’t she?

They hate her.

It’s an entire country in an abusive relationship with the weather.

She drives many to despair, or drink.

However, if she does arrive!

All is forgiven.

Couples kiss each other on the Meadows, lay down amongst the daisies and rejoice in the plain exultation of living! Holistic practitioners talk craniosacral therapy – outside – over multiple shots of coffee. Kids play football, or rounders, or Grand Theft Auto, or skateboard, or do wheelies on bikes in the middle of the road. People get pierced in Cockburn Street, or tattooed. Buskers sing their songs a wee bit louder. Art is made happily on the street. Even the jakies nod and dance and say fair play tae it. Posh people cruise out to East Lothian in hatchbacks stashed – for this one glorious day! Girls with legs rising up to very tight short shorts – go out fir cocktails – in the early afternoon. Beer gardens fill with drinkers chatting football, or gossip, or philosophy, or music, or sex, or death. They all turn up for summer. Stick by her until she goes. Dot puts the joint out. She is not going to be here much longer. These ever-present thoughts of the hustle and motion of her hometown mean one thing.

Nostalgia is pre-empting her exit from the entire place.

For good!

It’s not safe in here – her flat door gives a good impression of security but in all truth – its screws are loose. Dot can pull the letter box back with little effort. Stick her arm through. Turn the latch to let herself in. So can anyone else. Dot can hear something in the lower levels moving around. Traces her fingertip over the smooth, cold, metal hammer. That stairwell is a horror movie whose longest and most dedicated audience are ghosts. She doesn’t normally go through this building on her own at night. She locks herself in here. There’s a clatter below. The sound of a door slamming and she bolts upright. Heart batters off her chest. Then there is nothing. It was just… it was nothing. Dot tells herself that again and again until her palpitations begin to ease. Outside her flat door, and in all the floors below, there are absolutely no human sounds.

The peripheral noise of others has gone.