‘I know, right? You look the same, sort of. Good-looking bastard.’

‘Why were you in Edinburgh?’

‘Checking out a new site for a bar. This company I work for, they take over derelict buildings and turn ’em into artisan gin palaces.’ He put speech marks around ‘artisan’ with his index fingers.

Dan raised his eyebrows. ‘In Edinburgh?’

‘Leith, believe it or not. By the waterfront.’

‘Is that Bob Marley on your T-shirt, by the way?’

‘One of the Wailers, I think,’ Dave said. ‘Got it in Oxfam. Do you see anybody? Y’know, anybody from Sheffield?’

Ali’s face formed in Dan’s mind like a portrait in smoke, there and gone, too ephemeral to trust. Dave Marsden was real; Alison Connor was a memory. Ali Connor could be a figment.

‘No,’ Dan said. ‘Well, I saw Kev Carter about four years ago. We talk online, now and again. D’you still live in Sheffield?’ he asked.

‘No bloody chance,’ Dave said. ‘I married a posh lass, we live in Guildford.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, everybody seemed posh when I went down south.’

‘I went further north,’ Dan said. ‘Not south. Followed an Irish girl, settled in Scotland.’

‘Oh, I know all about you,’ Dave said. ‘Read your column, read your reviews, read that book about the Bunnymen an’ all.’

‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘You always did like your music.’

‘Do you remember that gig in Donny?’

‘Which gig?’

‘Comsat Angels. Chuffing hell, you were like a bloody groupie.’

Astonishing, thought Dan. He stared at Dave. ‘Astonishing,’ he said.

‘What is?’

‘Comsat Angels. Second time they’ve come up in the past half-hour. Were you there, then? I know Rob was.’

Dave nodded. ‘Me and Rob were nearer the bar than the stage, but you were stood up front about two feet from that lead singer, staring at him like it was the second coming.’

Dan shook his head, smiling; he’d told that girl, Sky, all about Prince and the Revolution at the First Avenue Club, but for truly pivotal moments – those times in his life when destiny showed up and made him consider his future – he couldn’t top Doncaster Sports Club, 1979, a Monday night in June. Dan and his crew of mates had come in somebody’s Ford Transit, and there were about fifty people in the club to see the band, but only Dan was up front, transfixed in front of a smoke-filled stage. He could still hear in his head now exactly what he’d heard then, all the layers of sound that kept him rooted to the floor, made him feel stunned and lucky and clever to have come here. The wailing guitar, an aching, suspended, searing chord; drums coming in with the relentless momentum of a train on the tracks; a hypnotic bass, then soaring keyboards; and a frontman, Stephen Fellows, dark-haired, chisel-featured, sharp-suited, delivering tense, sparse lyrics like a disillusioned urban poet. Daniel had thought: That could be me. That should be me. What he is, up there: that is what I am.