Niall keeps drinking for most of the night and before the final dance, Orcadian Strip the Willow, he staggers up to the back of the hall, but can’t find the woman among the seats. Feeling sheepish, he makes his way along a winding corridor to the posh guest toilets to piss and swig the last of the whisky from his hip flask.

Leaning against an empty cubicle, he remembers that when he met Christine in the grocer’s in Strath Horne, she was wearing a long black skirt and her necklace with the purple stone, but these details could easily be inventions of his imagination. He said hello quietly to her as she was leaving. When she turned towards him he saw how truly beautiful she was and how she was some years younger. Eighteen. She looked at him suspiciously, her head only reaching his shoulder. He noticed he was standing too close to her and stepped away. In the castle bathroom he shakes his head and washes his hands.

When he finds his way back, he cranes his neck again, towards the seats, but they are empty. The one hundred or so guests have formed a single line of men and women facing each other. He still feels a dizzying strangeness but jumps back on stage to play with the rest of the band. As the crowd begins to turn and weave, a headache makes its way up his skull like a web. He looks around the room. Some people have become sloppy in their dancing, nearly spinning over and falling into each other, leaning too close, their heads back, misjudging their steps. His stomach lurches. He sees the younger group standing at the beginning of the line, whooping exaggeratedly as if the whole night is a joke. A young man with curly hair is keeping his partner close, trying to hold her gaze. She looks over her shoulder and slips out of his arms, as the dance demands, to spin with another man before returning to him. Niall’s arms feel heavy. He notices a figure again, at the back of the room. Someone is sitting in a chair by the door, watching, but he can’t make her out properly in the crowd. Sweat grows cold at the nape of Niall’s neck and he concentrates on playing as best he can, but still his stomach roils as his arms and hands work without thinking.

Another memory drifts back to him. A strange one, this time. A bath awash with blood. Bloodstains in the sink. Teeth. He tries to recall if he was in a fight at some point. Concussion. His nausea grows. He remembers washing someone’s hair in the bath. A woman’s long hair, dark with the water, flipped forward over her face. Blood in the bath. Teeth in the sink.