‘What? I thought you were one o’ them,’ says Diane from the corner, spraying Pledge on to a glass tabletop and wiping it.

‘Aye. Well.’ He balls his fist and stretches it out absent-mindedly.

‘Right then. Here you go, gentlemen.’ Hamish slides two tumblers across to Niall and Alan.

‘Cheers.’

‘Thanks very much.’ Niall feels queasy at the sight of the whisky, but he has to drink it, to keep going. As he takes a sip he imagines himself here, sitting like Alan, talking to younger men in twenty years’ time. Lauren will nearly be the age he is now. Maybe she will have a family of her own. This seems as real as Niall one day becoming President of the United States.

‘I know I ask you this every time,’ Alan says, ‘but how are things going, with Lauren and everything?’ He hesitates. Alan is always trying to get him to talk about his feelings.

‘Aye, it’s not about that,’ says Niall. ‘No, it’s fine. Just work.’

‘I remember when I lost Moira,’ says Alan. He shakes his head. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you never really … “get over it”, as they say.’

Niall looks straight at Alan, noticing his gym teacher is old now, with deep-grey hair. He thinks about what Sandy said and the girls he went to school with. ‘I haven’t lost her in that sense,’ Niall says. ‘She might, you know – we might hear something.’

Alan nods, raising his hand to signal he has crossed a line. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘just thought I’d check, you know.’

Hamish turns on the music, folk rock, signifying that the evening has started. Niall finishes his pint in silence and remembers when Christine would sing, her voice crystalline over his guitar. The song makes him remember her feathered earrings and the way her hands hovered over bodies, to cleanse them. She was always cleaning and cleansing souls. Purifying. He once asked her to cleanse the kitchen and she made as though to slap him. It was always a joke.

The music changes to ‘Letter From America’ by The Proclaimers.

‘D’you think there’ll ever be another indie ref?’ Alan asks, his whiskered face crumpling at the question.

‘Who can say, Alan?’ says Hamish, absent-mindedly turning a page of the newspaper, seemingly unfazed by Scottish politics. ‘Who can say? Anything happens these days.’

Niall feels a leathery hand grab his as Alan leans over with some effort, reeking of BO and baccy. He has the urge to pull it away.

‘I know it sounds awful,’ Alan says, ‘but you have to be happy. There are a lot of ladies out there, you know? I know – it sounds awful and you can tell me to fuck off for saying it.’ He grins.