I thought of Felicity and felt a real swell of regret. What was I thinking? Supposing she started giving the house a proper going over, cleaning up, polishing, making it lovely as a nice surprise for my guests. God, she could still be there when Walt turned up with his source. She was a panicker. She’d say the wrong thing, or the right thing, but she’d get herself in a tizz. And John. Poor sod not long out of his hospital bed. I needed to be there. Needed to get hold of things. Take charge.

I didn’t hear him move. I didn’t register anything at all until he plonked himself down in the seat opposite – the bulk of him somehow making my own seat bounce. I jerked my head up. He gave me a smile. The place where his lip had been stitched looked more painful close to but there was a certain rough-hewn handsomeness about him. He looked as though somebody had started sculpting a really handsome man but stopped before doing the fine detail. Although he had a round face his features seemed blocky. I thought of footballs: a sphere made of up of stitched hexagons.

I reminded myself I was an arty young woman on her way home. I was pretty. I was alone. He might just be trying his luck. He leaned forward, enfolding one big pink fist with the opposite palm. There were patches of glistening pinkness on the knuckles: grafted skin. A wedding ring glinted on the wrong finger of the wrong hand.

When he spoke, it was with a thick Glaswegian accent.

‘You looked lonely, love. And I know I was. I’ve half a bottle of Whyte and Mackay if you’re thirsty. A listening ear, too.’

He was friendly in his manner. If it was a come-on, it wasn’t the creepiest I’d endured.

‘I was dropping off, as it happens,’ I said, mirroring his manner. ‘Two glasses of wine at a leaving do. I feel blotto as it is.’

‘Somebody picking you up, are they? We can split a taxi if we’re heading to the same place. You carrying on through to Edinburgh?’

I gave him a querying look. Picked at my nails, distractedly, glancing at my reflection again to see if I was looking as unnerved as I was starting to feel. ‘Why Edinburgh? Why not Glasgow?’

‘You look Edinburgh,’ he said, shrugging his big beefy shoulders. ‘Poet, or something. An artist.’

‘And you look Glasgow,’ I said, waving a hand at his general air.

‘What does “Glasgow” look like?’ he asked, and he seemed to be chewing on something with his back teeth; the hinge of his jaw pulsing in his cheek. ‘Knackered? Old? Gone to seed?’

‘Formidable,’ I said, picking a word that covered a multitude of sins and seemed the sort of thing this lady would say. ‘I went once. Such character.’