He heaps them up in the corner and opens a window to let out the fuggy scent. He picks up one of the colourful Jacqueline Wilson books, turning it over in his calloused hands. He has never read one but will spot them in the quaint Strath Horne Bookshop, to buy for Lauren’s birthday or as a Christmas present. She has started taking more of these books out from the library bus. When she isn’t looking he will write their titles carefully in a notebook to remember those she doesn’t yet have. He’ll find her own books lying damp in the bathroom or down the side of the sofa and tell her to take better care of them. His own book collection is limited to what he has picked up here and there in the charity shop or car boot sale, a few music biographies and the works of Tolkien and George R. R. Martin. The small bookshelf in his bedroom is mainly filled with sheaves of sheet music.

He sees an orange bucket next to Lauren’s pink rucksack, ridged like a pumpkin with two black triangles for eyes and a jagged mouth. For a moment, he thinks it is new but then remembers the night before. They bought it from the service station. Of course they did. He is almost surprised to picture them out at night, Lauren in her vampire costume. His memory is patchy. An icy cold creeps over his body and he realizes he is still in his pyjamas, his long hair wet from the shower. He stumbles to his room and picks up a crumpled, wet Motörhead T-shirt from the floor, willing himself to try and remember.

The air in his bedroom is unusually damp. To his annoyance, he sees small florets of mould spreading in one corner of the room.

He staggers down to the kitchen with the pumpkin bucket filled with rocks, to throw outside, his knee joints clicking, like Long John Silver.

There is nothing so comforting to him as the smell and crackle of lichened wood in the stove, nothing like the morning when light falls across the table, except where his daughter is curled in a blanket in front of the fire, eating her breakfast. The phone rings like a musical drill and he rises from his chair unsteadily. He looks at the clock on the wall. Just past noon. ‘Hello?’

There is a brief silence and then a low, half-whispered voice: ‘Hi, Niall. I hope I haven’t caught you in the middle of something.’

‘Er … not at all.’

‘It’s Angela.’

‘Hi, Angela. What can I do you for?’ He tries to sound happy to hear her clipped voice. He stands up and looks at the clock again. ‘Hang on. What time is it?’

‘Three o’clock.’

Lauren will have been gone for hours. ‘Huh.’

‘Why?’ She sounds genuinely concerned.

‘Never mind. So, on you go.’