And the thing was, I knew he would be. He was the sensible one in the family, and I should probably have worried more about myself being out there loose on the streets of Edinburgh. Again. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I hadn’t found Leonard by six o’clock, because I’d probably have no choice but to call the police then, and who knows what turn things would take. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d cooled my heels at a police station in that particular city, although losing an old man with dementia probably had far more serious ramifications than being drunk and disorderly after a Cure concert.

I stepped off the number 67 bus from Leith onto George Street with the bare bones of a plan. I’d got a free map from the bus driver, with Edinburgh on one side and the whole of Scotland on the other (nonexistent god forbid I’d need that), and I decided for once in my life to be methodical and cover the city grid, street by street. The task Norman had set me felt overwhelming and, if I’m honest, I didn’t hold out much hope, but I told myself the car was pretty distinctive, so that was in my favor. Come to think of it, so was Leonard. So one never knew.

With random performers and crowds of spectators for Fringe events on virtually every corner, the city was heaving, and it took me a good hour to walk the length of just two streets on the map. My neck began to ache from double-taking on every blue car that caught my eye, and I became quite the expert on old men, learning more with every one I spotted. How they walk, the hunch of their shoulders, the way their heads seem to sink into their necks, and the angle at which they seem to tip forward, as if in constant fascination with their shoes.

I wondered how far forward my dad would have tipped by now, at sixty-seven. How he’d have walked and bent and curved into an old body, and if he’d have found his peace with the blunting of age. And as I rounded a corner and set off down the next street, I wondered for the millionth time why the world’s best daughter hadn’t been enough to make him want to stay around long enough for me to find out.

By the time I stopped to eat lunch on a bench out the front of the train station, I was tired, hot and all that thinking hadn’t been without its consequences. My scar had noticeably warmed up, and underneath my clothes it was starting to feel like it was stretched to its absolute limits. I surreptitiously opened a button and pushed down the waistband of my jeans to see if it looked as bad as it felt. It was a bit of a shock to be reassured that it was still just the neatly zipped-together silvery track I had all but ignored for the past thirty years. On the outside, at least. I could only guess at what was going on inside me because, whatever it was back there, it was definitely getting angrier.