The march filed quietly down the damp slope into Princes Street Gardens for the rally at the bandstand. Neil thought about the footage he’d seen of the London protests, all that vigour and anger and youth. He remembered marching on George Square in Glasgow, screaming and spitting, one small drop in a wave of fury, consumed with the righteousness of what they were doing. Maybe the difference was the city, maybe the difference was him. He had turned thirty-eight the week before, had gone to see the Fall with some friends, drowned in a leather-jacketed sea of men his own age and older, all holding pints. He’d watched Mark E Smith writhe and swear and wondered that someone could still find the energy to feel that much.

The writer was going to be speaking at the rally; unusually for a protest he’d been announced in advance, a press release sent out.

‘No, it’s not something I’d normally do,’ he said to the tape recorder, as they huddled at the back of the bandstand, glad of the roof. ‘Not anything I’ve ever done before. But we’re living in exceptional times, aren’t we? Where over a million people can march on the capital city making their wishes known and the government just ignores it? Where we wage war on countries under completely flimsy pretexts to get at their oil? If people like my books and want to listen to me, and I can use that to get more and more of them to realize what’s going on – well, it becomes a duty, doesn’t it?’

Neil nodded eagerly, took a second to notice he was motioning to stop the tape recorder.

‘Listen, I think – I mean, do feel free to come backstage here with me, but you’d probably better switch the machine off. None of these people have agreed to be part of the interview, or recorded. You know?’

Neil kept on nodding – it was something to do with his face. He takes me for a fool, this man, he thought. He thinks I’m a rank amateur, some wee freelancer who struck it lucky and is on his first big celebrity interview. It’s the tape recorder. The fucking tape recorder.

‘Good man. Good man.’