‘Well now. You’ll be coming back up north with us tomorrow, Malcolm, unless you’ve got anything else on? We’ve a few spare rooms, and it’s not tourist season. You can lend Donald here a hand with his bits and bobs, maybe you could do a wee jam session in the pub together from time to time? They like that. Where are you staying tonight, anyway? Donald, I think we could probably get Malcolm a hotel room, could we not? Maybe not where we’re staying, but thereabouts. You’ll get a good breakfast, and we’ll come and pick you up about ten. What do you say, yes?’

Donald looked at this woman, this miracle of a woman, and wanted to bury himself in her, raise her on high above the shoulders of the crowd around the bar, take out an advert in the newspaper in her honour.

‘Are you sure, love?’ he asked, later that night, as they curled together in the big clean sheets of the hotel bed. ‘It won’t be easy. Caring for the sick never is, and he’s not going to be the most patient of patients.’

‘Donald Bain. Didn’t you always tell me the man was more family to you than your family? Even given everything he’s done, you care for family. It’s what you do.’

Donald was surprised to see Malcolm actually sitting there, on the steps of the bed and breakfast they’d found for him, the next morning, a crumpled plastic bag at his feet. He’d showered, and he took the new jumper Morna had bought for him (her one bit of shopping in the big city, as it happened) docile as a lamb. In the car on the way up, he mostly slept in the back seat, unless roused by a particular tune on the cassette player, mumbling still-sweet harmonies through his beard.

There are no recordings of Malcolm Campbell singing. Donald had thought that Anouli might have something, even a live session that he’d sung back-up on, but she replied, weeks after he’d contacted her through her record label, to say that there was nothing left. She’d destroyed some songs they’d been working on together after she’d thrown him out. Drunken rage. No fury like a woman scorned, ha? Oh Jesus, I can’t believe he’s gone, she said.

Donald had woken with a powerful need to get out of the house that day. It smelled of illness, and they couldn’t open the windows as the draughts were too sharp. He could hear Morna downstairs, her radio on as she clicked about the kitchen. He pulled the trousers he’d worn yesterday over his pyjamas, walked quietly past Malcolm’s door.

‘I’m going out, love.’

‘Out? You’ve nothing on today, have you?’

‘No no. I just want a bit of air. ‘