There was no harm, Dan decided, no harm at all, and they changed course for Niddry Street where they ducked into the twilight zone of Whistle Binkies, open till 3 a.m., live music every night, and properly bouncing at just gone midnight when they walked through the door.

He’d got home at half past two in the morning and let himself into the still, silent front hall with the exaggerated caution of the mildly drunk, but he’d still woken up McCulloch, the doughty little Jack Russell, who’d then left his basket with the resigned air of an elderly retainer and followed Dan all the way to his office in the eaves, at the top of the house. It was an awkward room really, with sloping ceilings and only one small window, but it faced west, so on a cloudless evening it poured a gentle stream of sunshine on to the dark wooden floorboards. The room contained a chipped and scarred industrial desk and an old brass anglepoise lamp from the offices of an Edinburgh mill; an original Eames chair, black leather, metal frame; a turntable, a CD player and an iPod dock; three specially built steel cabinets for LPs and singles, and a fourth for CDs. He’d kept his cassette tapes too, hundreds of them, but they were in plastic crates in the basement. One wall was given over to books, another to a vast world map, and a third was plastered with memories, every one of which had a hold on Dan’s heart. A signed black and white shot of himself with Siouxsie Sioux after a gig in Manchester in 1984. An official framed photograph of the Sheffield Wednesday League Cup winning team of 1991. A publicity poster for Echo and the Bunnymen’s Evergreen album tour of the States – the tour he’d been on with them, like, really with them, researching and writing their authorised story. Photos of Alex, felt-tip and crayon pictures by Alex, and a densely illustrated poem by Alex, aged eight, for Father’s Day:

He plays guitar and drives our car and makes me chips for tea.

He plays football, he’s good in goal and his favourite person’s ME!

Photos of Katelin, holding Alex, pushing him on a swing, holding his feet while he stood on his head. A photo of the three of them wide-eyed with happiness the night Alex got his stellar Highers results. And there in the centre of them all, a snap of Dan and Katelin, looking like children, standing against a backdrop of bougainvillea in a shady alley in Cartagena, smiling not at the camera but at each other, like two people with a secret joke. They’d hardly known each other then. Dan couldn’t remember who took it.