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message came. Before I even read it. I saw April Cowan’s name and thought, Moped! Just like that.
    â€œOne time years ago I passed another girl from Eden in the street in Glasgow. Rain Irving. I recognised her and I thought, Moped! And she recognised me and thought the same. Her lips moved, saying his name. I bet that sounds crazy.”
    â€œNot to me.” It sounded like my life. “Except that a tragic accident years ago … you’d think it would have faded by now.”
    â€œIt would have,” Stig said. He stroked Dorothy. “It wasn’t a tragic accident,” he said at last, and the low light, the cat, and the whisky made the words seem gentle. I nodded when I heard them.
    â€œIs that what you needed to say?”
    â€œNot really,” said Stig, “but we can start there. Have some more whisky. I feel as if once I start talking, I’ll never stop.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, “but—”
    â€œShe’s not going anywhere,” Stig said. “And they’ll not get wired into the crime scene till daylight and the rain stops.”
    â€œI suppose not,” I said, “but that’s not what I wanted to say.” I knew I was blushing this time. “Can we swap sides?” Because in primary seven, in Mrs. Hill’s class, I was on the left and he was on the right, and if I was going to look beside me for Stig Tarrant it seemed that, even all these years later, I should look that way. Maybe it was the whisky, but in that moment it almost seemed like all these years I’d been looking that way, wondering where he’d got to, and now at last things felt right again. Right! Even after what we’d seen.
    Stig moved carefully, keeping Dorothy as still as he could. She stopped purring, but she didn’t jump down.
    â€œEden had just opened up in the September,” he said, when he was settled again. “We were the first ones there.”
    â€œI remember,” I said. “It was in the news. I remember my mum and dad talking about it.”
    â€œHippies running wild, trouble waiting to happen?”
    â€œLike Lord of the Flies,” I said. Only this time, when I explained it, he spoke too.
    â€œBook,” we both said, and then we both started laughing.
    â€œIt’s not like I know your family that well,” I went on, after a bit, “but I’m surprised you went there.”
    Stig laughed again. I thought about the Tarrants, what I knew of them. Five years in Saudi. That marked them out from most of the people round here, who had to psych themselves up for an hour-long drive to Carlisle. They were certainly different enough when they came back—Big Jacky, Wee Jacky, Angie, and Stig—and from the things my mum said, I took it they’d changed while they were away. Look at her! Dressed like that to nip out to the shops. I remember wondering why someone in nice clothes would make my mother angry. She’s freezing cold and won’t admit it. That was another one. Angie Tarrant had a sunbed and she wore bare legs and short sleeves from early spring till late autumn, again at night at Christmas, showing off her tan. All my dad said was, Good luck to them. I hope it works out. That was when the Tarrants bought a big chunk of land at the old station yard, talking about a leisure complex, a pool and a gym and flats for the sort of people who’d want to live in them.
    â€œYou don’t know the half of it, Glo,” said Stig. “I don’t suppose Wee J would have been packed off to live in the woods if Eden was still going when he left primary, but BJ reckoned it would do for me.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. A lot of kids think they’re not the favourite and hardly any kids think they are. Even my sister moans about my mum and dad favouring me. “The right can do no wrong,” she said when she found out I was getting divorced and Mum hadn’t told her.