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secrets.’
    ‘Hannah, I’m going to the show of presents.’
    ‘Show of presents? What show of presents? Somebody getting married?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right.’
    ‘Well, who is it? Anybody I know?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, who?’
    ‘Look, Hannah, I have to go.’
    ‘When’s the wedding?’
    ‘Saturday, the day after the show of presents.’
    ‘So, who’s getting married?’
    ‘Don’t you know, Hannah?’
    ‘Haven’t a clue. Come on, tell me.’
    ‘I’m really sorry, Hannah.’
    ‘What? Who is it?’
    ‘It’s Joseph.’
    ‘Joseph? . . . My Joseph? It can’t be. We’re engaged.’
    ‘He’s got a girl pregnant and they’re having to get married. Didn’t you know?’
    ‘No, he’s said nothing.’
    ‘Hannah, I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Not your fault. Thanks for telling me.’
    It was the bitterest pill. What distressed Hannah, and would do so from that day on, was that her fiancé hadn’t had the courage to tell her the truth that behind her back he had met someone else. While she was keeping herself for him, he had been sowing his oats with another.
    ‘We were engaged and I have to hear from somebody else that he’s marrying another woman because she’s pregnant,’ she would later blurt out to a work colleague. Never did she confront her now former fiancé. ‘If he couldn’t tell me, then I won’t belittle myself by asking,’ she said. ‘It would sound too much as if I was pleading.’ And each day she would pass Joseph by, her head in the air, letting him off so lightly.
    The betrayal had a calamitous effect on her. For a while, she found it impossible to contemplate a serious relationship. She continued visiting the Barrowland, the tragedy of Patricia Docker by now more than a year distant, occasionally agreeing to a casual date but never going beyond a peck on the cheek at the end of a meal. She began drinking, now and then heavily and sometimes to excess, something she had never done prior to the break-up. It was drink that would both destroy her and probably save her life.
    One night in April 1969, she took the short walk from her home to the stop from which she would take a bus to Glasgow and the Barras. Those who knew her would assume she was heading for the Barrowland, but this was a night when Hannah would break with tradition. All bets were off. She was setting out with the intention of having a good time, getting drunk, casting care to the wind. She headed into the city centre and found herself in the Locarno in Sauchiehall Street. What happened in the next few hours would always remain hazy, but she found herself drinking, knocking back glass after glass, as though expecting to hear at any second the ten o’clock closing bells. She drifted from pub to dance hall.
    At the Barrowland, she joined the regular dancers milling about, chatting, arguing, hearing an occasional oath or threat from someone who had already over-imbibed, and not necessarily a male. There was much to talk about. Glasgow, being on the west coast, has a special affinity with Northern Ireland, where the political situation was becoming serious. Discussions at the highest level were ongoing about the possible need for troops to be sent to the province, a particularly worrying development for a deprived city such as Glasgow, where many young men had found joining the army the only solution to avoiding the dole queues. Now they faced the prospect of being called upon to fire shots and, even worse, to be fired at. The atmosphere had not been helped by the election of firebrand Bernadette Devlin who, at 21, became the youngest-ever female Member of Parliament, winning the Mid Ulster seat after standing as an independent Unity candidate.
    Others at the dance hall were boasting of their links to the ganglands in Newcastle upon Tyne and London. The underworld had always held a special fascination for Hannah, possibly handed down from her mother, who had ties with families in Glasgow linked to petty crime. Not that that