Back downstairs I make toast for dinner and eat it in front of the television in the living room, channel-hopping until I find one on which Dirty Dancing has just started. I make it to about halfway before becoming aware of a sense of prickling unease. Glancing around, I realize I haven’t drawn the curtains. The darkness seems to be staring in at me, but even as I tug the drapes shut, I can’t help wondering whether that is the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand—if there’s something out there, shouldn’t I be able to see it? And anyway, what if the something is inside rather than out?

There wasn’t anyone in the box room. There couldn’t have been. I changed the locks.

I return to the film and watch until the very end of the credits, well past the point of exhaustion, then I shove one of the new keys under the mat for Carrie and fall into bed, determinedly not thinking about the figure in the box room. Because there wasn’t anybody there. I changed the locks.

My father is living in Dublin. There’s something about the city that reminds him of Edinburgh, and he always loved Edinburgh: so much friendlier than Glasgow, which is the city of grit, the one that the true Scots understand, feel the lifeblood of in their bones—or so the folklore goes. It was in Edinburgh that he had the epiphany, a shining moment of clarity on a bright, blustery spirit-of-adventure day on Princes Street, with the castle standing proudly against the cloudless sky and a cold wind snatching at his clothes and hair, tugging him away; it was there that he realized he could simply unhook himself from his life and slip away like a dog slipping its leash. But once you unhook, you can never go back. He knows that now. He’s not sure if he fully understood it at the time.

So he lives in Dublin, and likes it, though he’s not Irish, but the Irish don’t care; they love his enthusiasm for the country—and they need all the enthusiasm they can get, now that the Celtic Tiger has lost its roar and the recession is truly biting. He runs a caravan park that’s owned by a big corporation and bemoans the increasing health-and-safety regulations that require him to post notices such as “Caution: floor may be wet” right next to the swimming pool. He hasn’t remarried. There were several opportunities over the years, but he wasn’t sure he could trust himself not to unhook again.

SIX

The station again.