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morning.
    ‘Uch, I don’t—’
    ‘Come on!’ She waved an arm uphill. ‘I’m not far at all! Just up there on Sutherland Crescent.’
    Iain had never been in a Sutherland Crescent house. They were the originals, where the town plan began, the earliest of the Helensburgh houses. Plain, but something to see. He’d been hearing about them all his life.
    No. He should be careful. Something shifted inside him. Something behind his ribs, precursor to a stitch. If he was indoors, alone with a woman, he thought maybe something bad would happen.
    ‘I’s just going to buy tobacco.’ He thumbed up the seafront, resisting.
    She held his eye and stepped towards him. ‘There’s a newsagent’s on the way. We can get whatever you want.’
    Somehow, then, they were crossing from the esplanade together, heading to the far pavement, the town’s shore. They kept quite far away from each other in the empty road and she was smiling. Iain didn’t know why she was smiling. Maybe she thought Iain and Tommy were going to let her go, or she was thinking about suntans and beaches and maybe she would make it to the trees. No. He shook his head at the tarmac. No, that wasn’t Susan Grierson.
    But Susan was as passive as a heifer too. He was worried for her, worried that she trusted him.
    Turning into a quiet street, the wind dropped suddenly and they could hear each other walking, breathing, the scuff of their clothes. It was intimate without a chaperoning wind. She moved close to him, falling in step. Iain felt he could have held her hand, exchanging warmth skin to skin, and it would be all right. There was something in her. A familiar sadness, maybe a bond. She was a bit lost too.
    They walked on until she stopped at a shop window.
    Handwritten adverts behind the glass. Dogs needing homes, events, Zumba classes, buy stamps here. Iain read, looking for answers to questions he couldn’t quite formulate.
    She was staring at him. He searched her face for clues. Finally, she nodded at the shop. ‘Cigarettes?’
    He remembered then. He pushed the door open, setting off a loud ‘beep’, and stepped in.
    He’d never been in here before. It was half empty. A shelf by the door held three long-life loaves. The teabags came in small packets, the bags of sugar were mini. It was a place for forgetful shoppers, old ladies, people with no car to get to out-of-town superstores.
    Behind the counter a shopkeeper was absent-mindedly arranging jars of penny sweeties as he chatted foreign words into the mobile clamped between his shoulder and his ear.
    He raised his eyebrows in hello, letting Iain know he could still serve, even though he was talking on the phone.
    Iain walked to the back of the shop. He needed a moment. He hadn’t felt this numb in a long time. Had he just pulled? She was handsome. Nice women had often wanted to save him and she was not a mental junkie. She didn’t even seem to have weans because she made and held eye contact. The eyes of mothers flitted over your shoulder all the time. They were always watching out.
    Had he just pulled? Iain looked into an open chill cabinet, blue light flickering over milk, and caught his reflection on the steel back. He looked like a sad fisherman. Broad shoulders, thick blond hair. But dirty. His trackie top was smeared brown at the cuffs and down the front. Susan Grierson wouldn’t pull a man this dirty, but then, she’d been in America for a long time. People change. Some women were attracted to mental guys. Sheila was. If he had sex with Susan Grierson would she expect him to be rough? Iain didn’t like that sort of thing.
    He walked over to the counter, nodding at the tobacco packets behind the shopkeeper. ‘Golden Virginia. And green papers and give us one of your lighters as well.’
    The shopkeeper picked up some yellow plastic lighters and showed them to Iain. Clear yellow neon yellow sandy yellow. ‘Three for a quid?’
    Iain didn’t need three but it seemed like less effort to say