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a serious conversation fizzled out, but he respected the insinuation implicit in her philosophy - that it is better to focus on the good things in life.
    He gave chase. ‘Hey! You...come here...that hurt...’
    After a hundred metres, she let him catch her and they hugged, breathlessly, while he took gentle revenge on her bottom. Their breathing was so loud that they didn’t hear the sniffs. Nor did they see the eyes that watched them from the nearby trees.

Chapter 9

    The WRACS facility was nearing completion when Hector was summoned to the plant manager’s office. He feared redundancy.
    Callum McDonald said, ‘Good news.’
    Hector relaxed.
    ‘Sellafield have started to build a new vitrification plant, the one that turns high-level waste into glass blocks. Well, they’re having trouble designing a micro-concrete for the process position inserts. They’ve been working on it for three months at the Sellafield lab. All their theoretical designs have failed in practice and they’re getting desperate for time. The micro-concrete has to be non shrink, flow-able enough to pump into narrow voids, achieve 3,000 pounds per cubic metre density, and its specified compressive strength.’
    ‘They want us to help them with their testing programme. Which is where you come in. Work on WRACS is running down. You can start on this straight away.’
    ‘What do I have to do?’ Hector gulped, worried it would be over his head.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Callum said. ‘They have produced all the designs.’ He handed Hector a thin file. ‘They are all in there. All you have to do is source the materials, follow their instructions, and carry out the tests.’
    ‘Is it a question of adjusting the admixtures, or is there still some granulometry to be sorted?’ Hector asked, feeling less nervous now.
    His boss pointed to the file. ‘You’ll see in there. The granulometry is the same throughout. They obviously see it as an admixture issue. Their biggest problem, apparently, is settlement of the extra lead in the micro-mix. They have nominated a cocktail of five admixtures. It seems to be a question of finding precisely the right dosage of each. The permutations are endless, so you could be in for a long haul. It could get boring.’
    ‘I won’t get bored’, Hector said. Inside, he felt excited. He couldn’t wait to get started. It would be fascinating.

    *

    Within two weeks he had sourced all materials and commenced testing regimes. Such was his enthusiasm that they had to buy more steel cube moulds as he produced mix after mix and took up large areas of the laboratory with six inch cubes of cast micro-concrete in various stages of maturity.
    But, eventually, his enthusiasm gave way to frustration as test after test failed to meet the criteria in one way or another.

    *

    At night, his life was lonelier than ever. Since moving into the croft he visited Thurso only once a week for shopping. This always included three bottles of whisky, and a kerb crawl around the streets to see if he could catch sight of Kathleen Rinaldi. On the occasions that he did, she didn’t appear to notice him.
    By now, he was seeking solace in videos as well as music and alcohol. The late night viewing and excessive alcohol meant that he routinely started the day with a hangover.

    *

    It was a hangover that changed his life. It had been a heavy weekend: head throbbing, tongue coated, breath ignitable. It was Monday lunchtime before he realised that he had not added any admixtures to the six micro-mixes he had poured that morning.
    ‘Shit,’ as he pushed the six half-set cubes into a corner of the workbench. He would dispose of them tomorrow. Meanwhile, he hurriedly started on a new batch.
    The next day he removed the six cubes from their moulds and threw them in the waste bin. Then, out of curiosity, he picked out one cube and placed it under the compressive strength-crushing machine. It met the strength criteria. He increased the pressure to break the