It does not seem like an adequate word to describe this level of terror. As a boy, he used to beg the moon not to go. Daylight is garish. It has gangrenous tendrils. The sunrays are tentacular. Too loud, cranked up like that. Orbish. Pustulating. Esme goes to her wee plastic table. Holds her hands above her head like a ballerina.

– Time fir the performance, Uncle Ivor.

– Who else is coming?

– They’re all here already, silly head…

She gestures around the room.

– Okay then.

– They’ve been stuck in the dark for nearly a hundred years, Uncle Ivor. They can’t get out but you can.

– You think so?

– Don’t be silly, Uncle Ivor. We know you can. It’s why you are here.

– Why have your friends been in the dark so long?

– A bad man put them there.

Esme puts out the teacups and the plastic plates. He’d like to think it’s just the tablets… he watches as one cup is raised by an invisible hand – then another – and they cheers each other. Esme pushes a tiny cup over to a wee girl he can’t see and Ivor gets the most undeniable feeling – that each of these women and girls – would fight the sunlight for him if they had to. He must learn how to do the same now – for them.

1999

Flat 9F9

Dot (27) i’m going to leave this city one last time

THERE IS a huge roar and clank and groan behind her. Dust billows up the High Street. Dot runs out of the close with the last bits of skeleton in her arms. She has taken some of the temporary railings from Hogmanay and placed them in a square in the middle of the street. Dot has been gathering the bones. Laying them out section by section – on the cobbled High Street for hours.

– The upper floors are falling!

A firewoman runs by and Dot crouches and hides her face a second.

Sirens lilt in from all directions.

A crane comes gliding up from Cockburn Street like some yellow metallic dinosaur.

– It’s too late!

Some fire chief shouts it to someone else.

Nobody is paying attention to Dot.