Tonight, the conversation meandered with the smoke from the fat joint, spiralling aimlessly into the sky. Frank and Lisa often spoke in riddles. Their minds had been expanded, back in 1967 on the ashram in Rishikesh, and now they couldn’t think straight. Instead, they scattered observations or ideas into the beautiful chaos of the universe, without responsibility or ownership.

‘Lisa, baby,’ Frank said in his Haight-Ashbury hippy drawl. ‘Awesome weed.’

Dan nodded. ‘Compliments to the chef,’ he said.

‘We’re a long way from finished,’ Lisa said.

‘The weed?’ It was Dan’s function, on nights like this, to weave something real from the loose threads.

‘The journey,’ Lisa said.

‘Right,’ said Dan. She held out the joint and he shook his head, so she passed it to Frank. Dan was done: already high, already happy. A couple or three drags were generally enough to loosen him up to a level where Frank and Lisa’s conversation seemed half-cogent. He had his phone in his pocket, with Belle and Sebastian on it, from Ali. He felt warm, warm thoughts about Alison Connor as he lay here on the forgiving bulk of Ophelia. He’d smiled at her choice; he didn’t mind a bit of Belle and Sebastian. He’d written enough about them in the late nineties, when they were taking off, a savvy bunch of students, just signed up with Jeepster. He wondered, did Ali know they were Scottish? She would, yeah, course she would. She wouldn’t know that their drummer used to sell pies on match days outside Celtic Park, though.

‘Hey,’ he said now. ‘You want to listen to a song?’

‘Sweet, sweet music,’ Lisa said.

‘Yep,’ Dan said. ‘So let’s give it a listen.’

He fished his phone out of the pocket of his jacket, and clicked on to Ali’s link, so that the weightless beauty of Sarah Martin’s voice drifted around them in the night. Frank, stoned, thinking any song was his song, started to sing ‘Waterloo Sunset’ over the top of it and Lisa spluttered with merriment in that crazy way she had: unhinged, machine-gun laughter. But then, by some miracle, they both fell silent and let the song play out, and when it ended Lisa sighed feelingly and said, ‘It’s a bummer, getting old, being old.’