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they’re both going over the top. And you realise it’s not that they’re talking about at all. It’s something else. That’s just the excuse for a much deeper enmity. I think that’s when it’s bad. Because they’ve stopped trying to sort out the real problem. They’re just using it as fuel to fight about other things.’
    â€˜I know what you mean,’ John said. ‘Know when I noticed that with Scott and Anna? Know one of the first times? The private school discussion? Remember that?’
    Mhairi breathed out and shook her head.
    â€˜Do I remember the Vietnam War? That was terrible. I thought Scott was going to get violent.’
    â€˜He would never have done that. But he took words as far as they would go.’
    â€˜Private school?’ I said.
    â€˜It was Anna’s idea,’ Mhairi said. ‘She said she wanted David and Alan to go to a private school. It was one night they were in here. Just the four of us. I think Anna mentioned it in company deliberately, to see if she could get some support.’
    â€˜Fat chance,’ John said. ‘I teach where I teach because I believe in it. It’s not just the money. That helps, though. The little there is of it.’
    â€˜Oh, the three of us were agreed. But Anna still had the right to her opinion. But Scott was outraged. By the time he was finished, I was beginning to think maybe I agreed with Anna. Excuse me. But he was out of order that night.’
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I believe you. I think it’s a family characteristic.’
    â€˜It was as if she was trying to undermine the meaning of his life,’ John said.
    Catriona and Elspeth entered the room like a Molotov cocktail, exploding in the middle of us.
    â€˜Come on, girls,’ Mhairi said wanly.
    All right, Canute said: turn back, tide. They had devised a different game. This game was less complicated than the previous one, marked a distinct regression in subtlety. What this game was about was simply decibels.
    â€˜Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah,’ Catriona sang. ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.’
    â€˜Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo,’ sang Elspeth. ‘Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo. Nyoo, nyoo, nyoo.’
    The lyrics were a lot better than the tunes. Mhairi nodded to John.
    â€˜Sh!’ John said, a man trying to blow out a forest fire. ‘What Mhairi and I were thinking. You and I could nip round to the pub. Have a blether there.’
    Mhairi smiled at me and nodded. I was grateful to them, not just because the shift would make communication possible but because I liked them and I didn’t want to repeat the brief vision I’d just had of shooting their children.
    â€˜You sure you’ll be all right, love?’ John said.
    I could understand the question.
    â€˜I’ve survived so far. I’ll get these two to bed. You won’t be too long?’
    â€˜No. We’ll go to the Akimbo. Okay?’
    John kissed her and kissed the children. I thanked Mhairi and waved to Catriona and Elspeth.
    â€˜Maybe we’ll see you sometime when the circumstances are less sad.’
    â€˜I hope so,’ I said. ‘I think I would like that.’

7
    W alking with John Strachan, I found myself surfacing too quickly from the depth of my preoccupation with Scott’s death into an ordinary evening. I felt a psychological equivalent of the bends. I couldn’t relate to what was going on around me.
    I seemed alien here. Yet I knew this town well enough. Our family had lived here for five or six years when my father – inveterate dreamer of unfulfilled dreams – had brought us to make another of those fresh starts of his that always curdled into failure by being exposed to too much harsh reality. But tonight the town didn’t feel familiar. Maybe I was seeing it not so much as the place where I was as the place where Scott wasn’t, an expanse of buildings that had lost my brother as