The crowd begins to assemble itself into pairs, making a border of couples around the edge of the room, the men with their arms over the women’s shoulders, the women holding the men’s hands, ready to be turned around the rectangular hall. The chords sound and they are off, their footsteps smothered with the music. Niall’s eyes follow Angela and Malcolm as they parade stiffly through the dance, turning one way and then the other. He stops watching them and becomes lost in his own movement of fingers and arms and keeping rhythm with the rest of the band.

It isn’t long before everyone is up on the dance floor. The music, as ‘heuchter-teuchter’ as it is, soon takes him over and his body starts to work with the group. Sandy Ross and the other fiddle player thread in and out with the accordion player while the drummer keeps him right. They are men who know what they must do: keep time, keep together and get drunk people up on their feet and out of breath. That is it.

Women soon dance without shoes, their hair falling loose from chignons and clasps, their make-up smudging. Men’s faces turn ruddy as they clap or clump along sets of six and flex their arms, turning women. Niall smiles at men, often older, who proudly curve their free arm above their heads, fingers pressed together. He sees teenagers not taking the dances as seriously as their elder relatives. Instead of setting to their partners during the Dashing White Sergeant, one group mimes ‘Night Fever’ moves before carrying on in the traditional way. Niall’s brain sinks in and out of the music. For a few moments he feels strangely elsewhere.

When the band takes a breather, setting down their instruments and spreading out across the stage, Niall says to Sandy, ‘I could do this every day of the week.’

Sandy shakes his head, laughing. ‘Aye, crowd’s not bad the night, eh.’

‘You know,’ says Niall, animated, ‘Lauren hates this.’

‘This?’

‘Well. No this, she’s no been old enough to go to these. She hates it in PE, you know, the social dancing. It’s starting again soon, for Christmas.’

‘Oh aye. I remember that. Remember it well.’

‘It is all right for you, the girls had to form a queue back then.’

Sandy laughs. There’s something steely about it.

They stand for a while and watch the other people drink and talk. The hall is large but has heated up too quickly, the narrow castle windows coated with steam. The old man in the band comes to join them. Niall says, ‘I was just telling Sandy, my daughter, she hates, you know, dancing with the boys. I can’t say I blame her.’