Holland laughed nervously and moved on.

Later, Ted found himself in a huddle with Reader and Jack.

Jack said, “I’d have asked him if Willie MacLeish is playing.” MacLeish was Hibs” star striker.

“You’re right,” Ted said seriously. “I would have got more sense.”

“And I’d have asked him,” Reader said stiffly, “if there’s any word of my husband.” The first time she’d mentioned him. And with that she turned and walked to her office, to start another sleepless night of work.

Ted stared after her. She was, he’d first thought, just an ineffectual worker, and he’d treated her with contempt. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But she was, of course, a woman with a life of her own. A family maybe. And he’d never thought even to ask.

The evenings were long.

Just a day or two from near death, and boredom was becoming their biggest enemy.

On Ted’s advice, Reader had banned alcohol, but allowed in TV, powered by a portable generator. The reception of the terrestrial stations was poor — local transmitters knocked out, lousy conditions because of the volcano weather lingering over Edinburgh — but satellite dishes seemed to work reasonably well. Reader had intended to show a steady diet of game shows, pop and movies — she even wanted to run videos — but Ted suggested that, except for kids” programming in the area set aside as a nursery, she simply run the news. People here wanted to know, after all.

The news, the images from Edinburgh, worked to keep people quiet. Ribald cheers whenever somebody in the Rest Centre was shown.

The Hibs-Hearts soccer match attracted the biggest crowds around the TVs. The game itself was played at Ibrox Stadium, the home of Glasgow Rangers, and the teams, depleted by the disaster, were reinforced by loan players from other clubs, in England and Scotland. There seemed a genuine warmth as the stranded people watched their teams battle it out, fans of the two clubs mingling without self-consciousness or conflict.

When the game was done, the mood was subdued, it seemed to Ted: subdued, but somehow deepened. As if the televising of a soccer match, two scratch teams chasing a ball around a park, had moved people on a level the destruction of a city never could.

Even the news of alcohol-fuelled rioting among Glasgow fans that followed the match didn’t seem to mar the mood.

At the end of the fourth day, as the light was fading, Ted realized he hadn’t taken any air. So he walked out through the foyer, still crowded with new arrivals, and stepped into the comparatively fresh air of the patio outside.