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overnight on the sleeper; had complained that the club car hadn’t been open – staff shortages.
    ‘Bloody disgrace. You privatise the railways and still can’t get a decent whisky and soda.’
    ‘Christ, does anybody still drink soda?’
    This was Lorna, back at the house as they prepared to go out to lunch. Lorna had always had the handling of her brother. She was all of eleven months younger than him, had somehow found time in her schedule for this reunion. Lorna was a fashion model – a story she was sticking to despite encroaching age and a shortage of bookings. In her late forties now, she’d been at her earning height in the 1970s. She still got work, citedLauren Hutton as an influence. She’d dated MPs in her time, just as Cammo had seen fit to ‘walk out’ with the occasional model. She’d heard stories about him, and was sure he’d heard stories about her. On the rare occasions when they met, they circled one another like bare-knuckle fighters.
    Cammo had made a point of choosing whisky and soda as his aperitif.
    Then there was baby Roddy, just touching forty. Always the rebel at heart, but somehow lacking the curriculum vitae. Roddy the one-time Scottish office boffin, now an investment analyst. He was New Labour. Didn’t really possess the ammunition when his big brother came in with all ideological guns blazing. But Roddy sat there with quiet, immutable authority, the shells failing to scratch him. One political commentator had called him Scottish Labour’s Mr Fixit, because of his ability to brush away the sand from around the party’s many landmines and set about defusing them. Others called him Mr Suck-Up, a lazy explanation of his emergence as a prospective MSP. In fact, Roddy had planned today’s lunch as a double celebration, since he’d had official notice just that morning that he would be running in Edinburgh West End as Labour’s candidate for the Scottish Parliament.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ had been Cammo’s rolling-eyed reaction as the champagne was being poured.
    Roddy had allowed himself a quiet smile, tucking a stray lock of thick black hair back behind his ear. His wife Seona had squeezed his arm in support. Seona was more than the loyal wife; if anything, she was the more politically active of the two, and history teacher at a city comprehensive.
    Billary, Cammo often called them, a reference to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He thought most teachers were a short hop from subversives, which hadn’t stopped him flirting with Seona on half a dozen separate, usually drunken occasions. When challenged by Lorna, hisdefence was always the same: ‘Indoctrination by seduction. Bloody cults get away with it, why shouldn’t the Tory Party?’
    Lorna’s husband was there, too, though he’d spent half the meal over by the doorway, head tucked in towards a mobile phone. From the back he looked faintly ridiculous: too paunchy for the cream linen suit, the pointy-toed black shoes. And the greying ponytail – Cammo had laughed out loud when introduced to it.
    ‘Gone New Age on us, Hugh? Or is professional wrestling your new forte?’
    ‘Sod off, Cammo.’
    Hugh Cordover had been a rock star of sorts back in the 1970s and ’80s. These days he was a record producer and band manager, and got less media attention than his brother Richard, an Edinburgh lawyer. He’d met Lorna at the tail-end of her career, when some adviser had assured her she could sing. She’d turned up late and drunk at Hugh’s studio. He’d opened the door to her, thrown a glass of water into her face, and ordered her to come back sober. It had taken her the best part of a fortnight. They’d gone to dinner that night, worked in the studio till dawn.
    People still recognised Hugh on the street, but they weren’t the people worth knowing. These days, Hugh Cordover lived by his holy book, this being a bulging, black leather personal organiser. He had it open in his hand as he paced the restaurant, phone tucked between