‘Ah, don’t mind him, like,’ said Lee, with a conspiratorial smile, and Neil wondered what he’d done to attract the unswerving devotion of this puppy-dog. ‘He’s just a bit shy with new people is all. Man’s magic with a fiddle, like. You hear all those folk arrangements, on the R.E.M. song? That’s all Donald. Him and Clio go way back, far as I can make out. Like, she’s known him since she was a kid. That sort of thing.’

‘Hoi, soft lad,’ said Sean. ‘Don’t go sharing everyone’s life story when they’re at the bogs, eh?’

‘Sorry,’ said Lee, his smile getting even wider. ‘I love a gossip, me.’

Neil coughed, tried to make his face seem friendly, finally had the breathing space to say the thing he’d been bursting for.

‘I might head back through there – see how she’s getting on. You boys coming?’

Some of the plastic chairs from the auditorium had been rearranged into a loose circle that Clio somehow managed to be at the head of. As the door creaked she looked up and called to them.

‘Come in! Come in! Come and join the body of the kirk!’

The teenagers from the back row were sitting on either side of her, gazing in. An older couple, who had shyly put themselves at a distance, were gradually unfurling under Clio’s beam; the woman had kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up under herself. Irene from the bar table was there too; and little spotty Duncan, sitting admiringly by Danny, who had pulled himself slightly out from the group, was watching Clio with a tiny smile.

‘So,’ she said, beaming up at Neil as he and the Scousers fumbled for extra chairs. ‘We’re just discussing the first records we all bought. Siobhan here,’ she indicated the teenage girl, ‘actually says hers was “Rise Up”, can you believe it? Her taste in music has got way better since then, though, hasn’t it, Siobhan? What about you, Dorothy? It is Dorothy, isn’t it? I thought it was. Just wanted to make sure. What was the first record you ever bought?’

Round the circle she went, glitter in her smile, everyone blooming. He noticed that the lipstick situation had been sorted, and also that no one else got to talk for too long. Clio was the conductor. Donald moved silently around behind them, packing up the instruments, reeling in the wiring. At one point he ambled over and touched Danny on the shoulder, and the promoter got up to help him. Clio continued to talk, about nothing much, bursting into that peal of a laugh often, steering well clear of the brimstone of her stage chat, and the room danced.

Danny broke the spell. ‘Right, that’s us all packed, and we really need to be letting poor Irene here get locked up and away to her bed.’