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behind them and an elegant, well-dressed woman who looks to be in her late fifties walks in with a West Highland terrier on a leash. On its release it bounds up to Trudi and Lennox, tail wagging, sniffing proffered, patting hands.
    — This is Dolores. Ginger makes the introductions to Lennox and Trudi, both of whom are greeted with great enthusiasm. — And this wee rogue here is Braveheart.
    The beast evidently does not like Lennox; a shared ‘Skarrish’ heritage means nothing. It hatefully bares its small front teeth below the rubberlike gums. It’s a narky wee bastard, liable to attack, he reckons.
    — Braaay-ve-
heart
! Dolores warns.
    Then the dog seems to collapse a couple of inches and skulks slowly towards Lennox as he sits down on the couch. It briefly looks up as if to bark, but then drops at his feet, coiling around them. — See! Dolores sings in triumph. — He likes you!
    — Aye, Braveheart, Lennox says warily, tentatively leaning forward and stroking the animal’s neck, becoming more bullish as his hand sinks into fur and he ascertains how thin it really is. Well chokable, he thinks, relaxing back into the sumptuous settee with cheery malice.
    Dolores seems fascinated by Trudi. — Well, aren’t you a pretty one? she luxuriantly observes, looking her up and down appreciatively. Trudi’s coy embarrassment is evident, as her hand involuntarily moves to her hair. Then her face stiffens in anticipation of the wedding guest list rising further.
    Dolores takes the bag she is carrying and waltzes gracefully across to the kitchen area. Ginger had said she used to teach dance. Lennox can see she’s light on her feet and in excellent condition apart from a bit of a distended stomach. Like Ginger, she has a sparkle in her eyes under that lacquered hair, which Lennox and some of the other boys on the force would habitually refer to as ‘shagger’s glint’. They wouldn’t be going quietly into old age.
    Dolores and Ginger give Trudi and Lennox separate tours. Everything in the apartment is new: pristine, gleaming and dust-free. Lennox notices the smell; that slightly burnt aroma that many places in America seemed to have. It’s probably the cleaning agents they use. He wonders if the UK has a distinctive scent for American visitors and what it’s like. In the master bedroom, Ginger shows off his electronic coin distributor. — You put all the coins in and it sorts them out, up to twenty at a time. Automatically stacked and bound intae paper wrappers. Amazing, eh?
    — If you accumulate that many coins, then why no just take them tae the bank?
    — Fuck the banks. Ginger drops his voice, taps his skull and winks. — These cunts take the fuckin pish as it is.
    In the other room, in spite of herself, Trudi is warming to the earthy candour of this American woman, who is older than her own mother. — My mom married a cop, and she told me not to make the same mistake, Dolores laments. — I did, twice. Two words of advice: short leash.
    — I’ll bear that in mind.
    Hearing talk of weddings, dresses and venues filtering through the walls, Ginger whispers to Lennox, — The girls seem to have hit it off. What say we slip our markers and I take ye somewhere special?
    — Okay, Lennox cagily agrees, wondering how he can sell this to Trudi. The problem in acquiescing to the idea that he’s depressed, or even its more benign bedfellow, ‘under stress’, is that it intrinisically means the ceding of his moral assurances. The potential at least existed for every comment he made to be viewed as a symptom of the disease. And he senses that Trudi’s management of his supposed condition is about control (hers) and disenfranchisement (his). Her logic is that his thoughts will take him back to the trauma of his work, therefore all independent deliberation by him is inherently bad. She will replace this with
her
projects, with nice things to think about, like the wedding, the new place to live, the furniture, the future