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glow, but no harm, I figured, in topping it up. I looked in at the Horseshoe for a pint of Deuchars and a pie-and-beans at the bar. Outside Central I took a cab and leaned back as we crossed the river.
    My wallet was pressing into my back. I tugged it from my hip pocket and felt the folded sheet of paper. I spread it on the seat beside me. There was a tension in the group, an air of suppressed hilarity, as if they’d been joking ten seconds before, and had to compose themselves for the camera. There was something too emphatic in the sombreness of the faces, the shadowed tightness of the mouths, the brows’ deep compression. Only Lyons was different, his features caught in a midway blur, a sinuosity of the lips suggesting laughter. His face was somehow clearer than the others, as if the flash had fallen full on him or else a mirror had thrown its refulgence his way. His eyes behind the lenses were bright. It was the face of a tourist, an autograph hunter.
    The cab had stopped. The ‘B’ of TRIBUNE had gone out, the neon shorted. I fished in my wallet for a note.
    *
     
    On Sunday evening I stood in the kitchen, making the boys’ tea. Muddy Waters on the sound system: ‘You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had’. James was playing with his action figures on the kitchen table. Roddy was through in the living room; incidental music from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone rose in intermittent crescendos above Muddy’s slide work.
    Pasta and smoked haddock. It’s my speciality – at least, it’s something I can do, something quick and unfuckupable that the boys appear to like. I took the smokies out of the fridge. These were the real thing: blackened, stiff, the tails still bound with twine. I loved to prepare them. You microwave the fish for sixty seconds. Then you prop it on a plate and press down firmly on the spine. You feel a crack and the whole fish subsides, collapsing into itself. When you flip it over the haddock opens like a missal. You peel the spine like a silk ribbon and the flesh comes away in moist flakes, thick bite-size discs.
    The day had gone well. In the morning we’d been to the Botanics and played hide-and-seek in the Kibble Palace, dodging around the primeval ferns. We lunched in McDonald’s and played a game where we pretended that James was invisible. Then we took the Underground into town, James woo-hooing in the echoey tunnels (‘Dad, another James is copying me’), and Roddy straphanging in the half-empty carriage. On Buchanan Street Roddy put a pound in a busker’s guitar case and walked back with that stiff-legged, sheepish look that always makes me want to laugh. In the toyshop I vetoed Rod’s initial choice – a Ninja sword that made electronic slashing sounds – and steered him to a Playmobil motorbike. James chose a pair of jousting knights. In the bookshop we bought Tintin in Tibet .
    The fish was prepared and the pasta was coming to the boil. I was unstacking the dishwasher and setting the table while James improvised savage unhorsings and protracted gory spearings amid the cutlery.
    ‘That’s like Adam,’ he said, pointing at me.
    ‘What is?’
    ‘That.’ He leaned across and touched my chin, pursed my lips between his fingers.
    ‘Jaggy!’
    ‘Oh the beard? Right.’
    I hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.
    ‘Adam’s got a ’stache.’
    He made a neighing noise and cantered a horse across his side-plate. I added salt to the pasta.
    ‘Do you like Adam? Is Adam nice?’
    ‘Yes he is.’
    A hissing burst of gunfire – the lances had turned into rifles – knocked one of the knights off his mount.
    ‘He’s Mummy’s friend.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    The windows were blanched. Condensation showed up the patterns of dirt – a mess of streaks and spots and runnels.
    ‘Dad?’
    I was stacking bowls in the cupboard when James spoke, so what he said next came through a bright ceramic clatter. But I still heard him.
    ‘Adam pushed me.’
    I turned round –