1
The Antiquary

It all started with an email.

David stumbled into work just before ten, his short hair pointing several ways at once, his jeans a gritty grey-blue, with a whiff of last night’s booze about him. As he swiped his card by the front door two removal men emerged, shuffling their way out with a battered pool table. There goes the last of the games room, thought David. It figured.

Still Waters was a thrusting, vibrant web-design company. At least it had been, almost, when the company launched five years earlier. Now that the dotcom dream had well and truly dissolved they were laying people off, frantically exaggerating to clients in a desperate attempt to win contracts, and sheepishly flogging all the superfluous, gimmicky crap they’d initially bought to attract graduates. The Playstation was long gone, as was the table football, and now the pool table was going the same way. David was surprised it had taken so long. After all, they’d already given nearly a dozen employees the bullet. Naturally, there were half a dozen directors still on the payroll, clocking up miles on the company Mercs and spending the afternoons at lunch or on one of Edinburgh’s more exclusive golf courses. But further down the food chain they were reduced to a handful of designers, programmers and developers, all so disenchanted with pay-cuts, increased hours and lack of recognition that there might’ve been a mutiny on the directors’ hands, if anyone could’ve been arsed.

David shrugged past the removal men into his cubbyhole corner of the office, keeping his head down to avoid being seen. Still Waters occupied the first two floors of a crumbly old stone building hidden down a cobbled alleyway off the main drag of Stockbridge. The walls were thick, the windows small and the ceilings low. Nestled between bohemian antique sellers and the poshest charity shops in the country, Still Waters was within a few yards of umpteen restaurants, cafés, delis, bistros and boozers, the last of which David and his disgruntled colleagues made good use of whenever they could sneak out.

David was probably still a bit pissed from last night. Nothing special, just a few pints after work followed by cracking open the bottle of Lagavulin when he got back to the flat. He would probably have to knock that whisky nightcap thing on the head, even if it was excellent fifteen-year-old stuff.

He fixed himself a coffee, fired up the PC and settled in for a day of surfing, with the occasional work-related moment thrown in to keep folk off his back. Christ only knew how long the company would stay afloat. David was surprised that he hadn’t been amongst those already booted out. He could do the work, it was a piece of piss to be honest, but he just so badly couldn’t be bothered exerting himself for a company that was about to go tits up anyway. Today’s hangover wasn’t exactly helping. At the moment he was supposed to be working on a site for some ridiculous motivational guru, Frank Lavine, whose command of office buzzwords, feelgood gobbledegook and doublespeak was something to behold. David was tempted to stick some made-up, meaningless platitudes in there, see if old Frank noticed the difference.

He started wading through his emails. Twenty-four in the inbox since he’d left at five last night, including all the usual spam and junk – cock enlargement, Viagra, Prozac, lap-dancing clubs, buy yourself a degree, online mortgages – did anyone ever fall for this shite?

Then he saw it, that name, sitting amongst all the drivel. Nicola Cruickshank. A coincidence? There must be loads of Nicola Cruickshanks in the world, it wouldn’t necessarily be from her. He clicked it open and as he read down he felt a tightening in his gut that couldn’t solely be put down to his hangover.

His head was spinning. Nicola Cruickshank. He hadn’t thought about her for years, but for what seemed like a lifetime he had fancied her at school, never getting up the bottle to go for it. He had always put it off and put it off, waiting for the right time, which inevitably never came. All through their drunken, hormone-addled sixth year they had flirted and danced around the issue, without ever getting anywhere. He waited and waited and waited for the right time and then… well, then there was the accident. And nothing was ever the same again.

He had never been back, not in fifteen years. That was helped in no small part by the fact that his parents had absconded to France, retiring to do up a barn in Limoges ten years before it was a trendy thing to do. Just as well, he would’ve struggled to go back to Arbroath, back to the place where his best friend had died. And now, here was a call from someone he was besotted with at the time, asking him to do just that. Jesus.

David drifted through the day. His hangover gradually receded, but the buzz of Nicola stayed at the forefront of his mind. He re-read the email umpteen times, even printing it off to take with him into the bogs where he read it twice before having a quick snooze, his cheek pressed against the cold ceramic of the cistern.

He noticed that her message had managed to tell him virtually nothing about herself. She still had the same surname, so did that mean she wasn’t married? He didn’t suppose it meant anything much these days. She worked for Historic Scotland, wasn’t that in Salisbury Place? Only about five minutes from his Rankeillor Street flat in the Southside of the city. How long had she been in the same city as him? She had gone to Glasgow Uni, he remembered that much, but then a degree only took four years, what the hell had she been doing for the other eleven?

He couldn’t stop thinking about her during the afternoon meeting, when they were informed that if productivity didn’t improve there would be more layoffs. He wasn’t being paranoid, there really were pointed looks in his direction at the mention of this, but the two pints at lunchtime helped him to ignore that.

By five o’clock he was thinking about Nicola more than ever.

Nicola had clicked ‘send’ then had a tiny panic attack. Why had she written to him first thing in the bloody morning, before coffee? Was she nuts? She re-read what she’d sent and cringed – it was even more rambling than her usual emails, and that was saying something. She didn’t have much demanding work today, just filing and processing, so she could’ve left it until she was a tad more coherent. Then again, she had been putting it off for ages, so at least now it was done.

David Lindsay. No one from Arbroath had heard anything from him for fifteen years, not since the accident and then the funeral afterwards. After she’d been called up about the reunion it had taken about half an hour of googling to find out that he designed web pages for a company in Stockbridge – quite a flashy and well-to-do one, judging by their website and list of clients. So he was still in Edinburgh after all this time, living in the same city as her for the last four years.

She didn’t have a problem with Arbroath, but she much preferred her life in Edinburgh, and her job at Historic Scotland was just about perfect, allowing her to get stuck in to history, architecture and archaeology without any of the pompous stuffiness of academia. The office was fine, if a little gossipy for her liking, and she worked on site a fair bit, which always made her feel like she was doing a proper job, not just penpushing.

As for her life outside work, that was dominated by Amy. She had been a grumpy little madam this morning when Nicola walked her to Sciennes Primary. Just like her mum, she was definitely not a morning person. Nicola pictured the two of them at the school gates, straggly haired, bleary eyed and buttoned up all wrong, two generations of the same family both struggling with the concept of an early rise. Sometimes it scared the shit out of her, how much Amy took after her, then at other times Amy seemed like an alien from another planet, with all these weird ideas of her own. Such is parenthood, Nicola thought with a sigh.

She tried to remember what David looked like. Tall, definitely – at least as tall as her, and pretty cute in a gangly, unformed kind of way. Plenty of buzz and chat and daft ideas, she remembered, mostly fuelled by booze, but he was still pretty good company to be with. She had fancied him, she supposed, although thinking about things in such terms now at the age of thirty-four seemed more than a little ridiculous. They had kissed, hadn’t they? A couple of times at parties or down at Bally’s or something, but she couldn’t really remember. She hadn’t taken it any further. They were all heading off to uni by the end of the summer anyway, that was the plan. She was going to Glasgow, he was off to Edinburgh, not exactly much of a distance away, but when you’d grown up in Arbroath such places seemed like a different universe. And besides, he hadn’t really said anything about fancying her. God, listen to yourself, she thought, talking about fancying each other, it’s as if all this reunion chat is making you regress into a former life.

She wondered what he would make of her email. What did she make of it herself? It didn’t matter anyway, it was out there, in the ether, winging its way to his inbox and that was that. She had issued the invitation to the reunion as instructed, so it was up to him now what he did about it.

Nicola was looking forward to the reunion, just out of amiable curiosity more than anything else. She was back in Arbroath quite a lot, letting Amy spend time with Granny and Grandpa and all that, but she rarely went out when she was back, and she hadn’t seen most of the folk from their class in years. She heard plenty of gossip from her folks; in a town that small it was inevitable that everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. She wasn’t sentimental; would never have logged on to Friends Reunited expecting an unchanged world. But now there was this reunion, she was genuinely interested in how everyone’s lives had turned out. Hers had been gently adventurous, and she had Amy to show for it, so there must be dozens of other mini-adventures out there waiting to be discovered. David had blue eyes, she suddenly remembered, really cute blue eyes. She shook her head a little to clear the thought, and got up to make that coffee.

David turned into St Stephen Street in the muggy afternoon heat and descended into the subterranean gloom of the Antiquary. Spook and Alice from work were already in, and Spook was at the bar so he put in his order and headed towards Alice amid the burnished oak scruffiness of the pub. Alice was an irrepressibly chirpy English web designer, ten years younger than David, who managed to be relentlessly upbeat despite the perilous state the company was in. The fact that she did so without getting on anyone’s nerves was something of a miracle. Spook, on the other hand, was a dishevelled slacker goon who was obviously completely uninterested in his job, an attitude David had some sympathy with.

He couldn’t shake the image of Nicola from his mind. He’d already googled her, but rooting around the Historic Scotland website hadn’t come up with anything. He pictured her standing outside Boots, next to the steeple in the centre of Arbroath, that last New Year there. She was wrapped up in a massive red duffel coat and woolly hat and they had their Hogmanay kiss, which kind of extended itself into a snog. He didn’t know how long they snogged for (in fact, he couldn’t recall much more about that evening) but he did remember that they were interrupted by someone getting thrown through Boots’ window by opportunist looters, and they all had to scarper quick. He and Nicola had been drunk. At least, he had been drunk, and assumed she was too. Anyway, that was the closest he’d got to her. He had completely forgotten about it until this morning. Parts of his brain not used in fifteen years were getting powered up and made to process information. How could one little email manage that?

Spook and Alice got talking about work, but David wasn’t listening. They were joined by a couple more of the company’s bottom feeders, keen as ever to slag off the directors and the owner, safe in the knowledge that at least the next forty-eight hours were work-free and theirs to fuck up whichever way they chose.

David still wasn’t listening. He was thinking of the time he and Nicola had sat beside a fire on Elliot Beach, huddled together on a blanket against the North Sea chill. Several others were sitting around drinking and a few couples had sneaked off to the sand dunes for more privacy. Two brave idiots were skinny-dipping. They hadn’t even kissed then, David just enjoying the proximity to her, feeling her long, fair hair against his cheek, looking at that beautiful, slightly crooked nose of hers that she wiggled when she was amused like that woman out of Bewitched, and gazing at the long bony elegance of her neck.

But one memory leads to another and another, and once he was on Elliot Beach he was straight away thinking of Colin, how the two of them used to walk Colin’s Irish setters in the afternoons along there, fooling the dogs into the water after imaginary sticks and arguing about the problems with Arbroath FC; excited about how Colin was going to make a difference when he joined the club.

And once Colin was in his mind, it was a small step to the funeral a few weeks later, up at the Western Cemetery. Standing there, utterly numb, in a borrowed suit several sizes too big, his school shoes and his dad’s black tie, wondering how the fuck such things could be allowed to happen.

This is why he hadn’t thought about the past, why he hadn’t been back to Arbroath, this knot in his stomach even now, fifteen years later, thinking about the wasted life, the wasted opportunities, the stupid, pointless waste of it all. He hadn’t consciously thought about Colin for years before today, but now the memories filled his mind. The oddly curly black hair that framed a face which seemed to make every girl (and every girl’s mum) in town swoon, with a disarming little smile and a glint in his dark eyes that said he knew he was good-looking but wasn’t going to abuse that fact. The way he was also the strongest and fastest person David had known, yet you only saw that on the football pitch. He was also bloody smart academically and could’ve gone to uni, but kept quiet about it. The way he was so effortlessly good-natured was something that used to simultaneously produce awe and irritation in David. How could someone be so nice all the time? But he was, he was nice all the time, but never sickeningly so. And he’d been dead now for fifteen years.

There was a calendar behind the bar, flaunting a bland picture of Highland beauty. David realized with a start that it was the eighth of August, which meant it was fifteen years and two days since what would’ve been Colin’s eighteenth birthday. That meant fifteen years and three days since his funeral. For the first few years the anniversary had produced a sense of foreboding in him, an uneasy tension, but somehow, somewhere along the line, he had forgotten about it. This year it had zipped by through the week and he’d been utterly oblivious.

And now there was this invitation from Nicola. He had the printout of the email in his back pocket, pretending to himself that he’d accidentally left it there when he came out the bog earlier in the day, but he knew he wanted that contact with her, that reminder of her, close to him this weekend. His mind was now racing with memories of Arbroath and school, the pubs and parties, fights and snogs that made up the final few months of life there. He sensed a rush of energy, and it felt like the inside of his skin was itchy. His teeth seemed to throb and his throat was dry. How could the dim and distant past affect him like this?

He finished the dregs of his pint and got another round in. These days he was very definitely on weaker cooking lager. For years he had pummelled his body with executive – Stella, Kronenbourg, Staropramen – but now his body was rebelling. His hangovers got worse and he seemed to get more drunk, despite drinking less.

He returned to the table. The rest of them were still sniping at Still Waters, picking over the debris of the latest botched job – a half-arsed site for a charity that was delivered over budget, past deadline and with only half the functionality they’d promised – and what it might mean for the future. All their coats were already on shaky pegs, and they were speculating who would be next out the door. This wasn’t exactly what David had pictured when he’d done his computer science degree all those years ago. Back then it was as if computers had barely even been invented, and if ever there had been an opportunity of getting in on the ground floor it was then. After his degree and a couple of years kicking around doing fuck all – working in pubs, mostly – he’d done a Mickey Mouse web-design post-grad at Napier, just when the internet was getting going. The millions were there for the making, as Amazon, Ebay and Google had subsequently proven, but none of that success had come David’s way.

He was also on his own. His friends in Edinburgh were either people he’d known since university or random mates he’d picked up on the way. With precious few exceptions they were all either married, engaged or in long-term relationships. Several of them now had kids. He had been shocked the first time he’d had to hold a friend’s baby. They’d let him hold on to their child? What the hell were they thinking? But him, he had no one. Sure there had been women, although not nearly as many as maybe he would like to think when he totted it all up, but for whatever reason (and he couldn’t really think of any, now that he tried to) none of them had stuck around very long. And of course, he had never kept in touch with schoolmates. Christ, what was that Lemonheads’ song he listened to all the time back in his student days? Something about a ship without a rudder. That just about nailed his life at the moment.

He dipped in and out of the conversation around the table, gazing absent-mindedly at a dark and dusty portrait hanging over the empty fireplace in front of him. The guy in the painting looked like a right stuffed shirt, from maybe two hundred years ago, and his eyes gazed impassively back at David.

Just then Spook suggested they fire up into town, maybe the Basement, make a night of it. David couldn’t face it. He’d had a few pints and, sure, he wanted to get hammered, but not with these people and not in the Basement, which, anyway, he’d been going to for so long it made him feel like a fucking granddad. He scooped the last of his pint and, shaking his head at the protestations from the motley assortment around the table, got up from his stool, doing a John Wayne dismount, and headed for the door.

It was shockingly bright outside the Antiquary, and David squinted reflexively into the sun, raising his hand to shield his eyes. The mugginess of earlier had burnt off, and the Scottish summer sun was doing its best to burn pale northern skin into the evening. David was a bit unsteady, having had a few pints on an empty stomach. He decided he couldn’t be arsed with the bus home, and flagged a passing taxi.

‘Rankeillor Street, mate,’ he said as he keeled into the back, ignoring the signs to put his seatbelt on. It was only then he remembered with a groan that it was the first weekend of the festival, and the traffic across the centre of town would be a fucking nightmare. He was in for a long, bumpy and expensive ride.

So what about this class reunion? he thought. Of course, he wouldn’t go. He couldn’t, not after all these years. It sounded from Nicola’s email that all these people had kept in touch with each other over the last decade and a half – she’d said that the organizers phoned her up, hadn’t she? – how the hell was he supposed to fit into all that?

Who else would be there? He found himself struggling to match names and faces from his class. He wondered what it was like for those people who had never left Arbroath, wandering around town repeatedly encountering faces, places, street names, buildings, parks from the past – it must be like walking through a history book, or a graveyard where through some freakish twist you can see all the ghosts, the decomposing corpses risen again to wander forever, never finding peace.

Then again, he had his history in Edinburgh, he had lived here almost as long as he had in Arbroath. That sudden thought shocked him. He worked it out – in three more years he would’ve spent half his life in this city. But those were adult years, grown-up years, even if they hadn’t really felt like it. The Arbroath years, they were rammed full of all that formative childhood crap, the stuff that supposedly made you who you were, not that David subscribed to that point of view. You made up who you were in the present, moment to moment, and that could change any time you liked. When he moved to Edinburgh he’d changed from David to Dave, not such a big leap, dropping a syllable from your name, but it signified everything, a new start, a new person, a newborn life, with no history, no past, no baggage. A clean slate.

Who was he kidding? He had carried Colin’s death around with him for years. He had never talked about it. Ever. To anyone. Why not? Truth be told, what was the point? The past was a foreign country, or whatever that saying was. Damn right it was. He had basically started a whole new life in Edinburgh back in 1988, and had never looked back.

Until now.

He wondered again who would be there at the reunion that he might know. What about the other two from the ADS? The ADS – it seemed so puerile now. The Arbroath Drinking Society had been named as a piss-take of the Arbroath Soccer Society – the equally pretentious name that the footy casuals had given themselves. The casual violence surrounding football had seemed all-pervasive at the time, and their wee joke at the arseholes that perpetrated it was intended to make a point, something which was now lost.

There were four of them in the ADS. Himself, Colin, Gary Spink and Neil Cargill. They were best of friends in fourth year at school, when they’d formed the drinking club, and it had lasted as a benevolent clique for two years. By the time they left school, though, the four of them were drifting apart, but they still clung to a last childish emblem of camaraderie, more out of convenience and an embarrassment about admitting that their lives were going in different directions. Colin was about to embark on a career as a professional footballer with Arbroath FC; David was off to uni; Neil, with nothing better on offer, had signed up for a life of military discipline in the Marines and was heading for basic training at the end of the summer; and Gary, well, Gary was stuck in Arbroath with the prospect of working for a bank, building society or worse.

Then Colin had died. After the funeral David had left town early, speeding over to France to help his folks renovate their barn. From there he had gone directly to Edinburgh, and had never since spoken to anyone from Arbroath.

Until now.

He just couldn’t go to the reunion, he thought as the taxi pulled into his street and he started rummaging for notes and cash. But then he thought of Nicola again. Jesus, Nicola Cruickshank, he said out loud, shaking his head. He paid the taxi driver and stumbled out the cab into his home.

David’s flat was a typical bachelor affair – two black leather sofas and a large flat-screen TV in the living room, generic film posters from his past (Trainspotting, Reservoir Dogs) lining the hall, and a messy bedroom dominated by a massive king-size bed. Among the debris in the living room were CDs, DVDs, magazines, empty lager cans and a couple of large pizza boxes. David finished another lager and surfed channels, cursing with each flick the banal choice of Friday-night television.

He should’ve stayed out. What use was sitting here on the weekend, alone, doing fuck all? No use, that’s what. But then he thought of the rest of them in the Basement, and he felt a shiver of repulsion at that prospect too. He mentally surfed through his other friends in town, but couldn’t come up with anyone he wanted to talk to, let along meet up with. Where did that leave him? Back here on his own, that’s where.

He made for the drinks cabinet, a classy wooden globe, and poured himself a house measure of Lagavulin. As he sat back down, the sofa gave a sigh under his weight. He took the email printout from his pocket and read it again.

A school reunion was not an attractive prospect, that was for sure, but Nicola Cruickshank? That was a different story. He dug his mobile out his pocket and thought about phoning her for the next fifteen minutes, his body enduring little ripples of nervous excitement each time he went to dial, then stopped. Eventually he downed what was left in his glass, poured himself a bigger one, sat down with his mobile in his hand and dialled the number at the bottom of the printout.

Who the hell was that now?

Nicola had not long got Amy to bed after the usual lengthy struggle of wills between parent and child, and before that she’d had her mum on the phone for over half an hour. Bless her mum and everything, but she didn’t half go in for pointless gossip. She had just poured herself a second large glass of wine when the mobile went off. She fished it out of her bag and checked the screen. She didn’t recognize the number. Probably some arsehole trying to sell her something, she thought as she pressed ‘reply’.

‘Hello? Is that Nicola? Nicola Cruickshank?’

It didn’t sound like a call centre eejit.

‘That’s me.’

‘This is Dave, Dave Lindsay. Erm… from Arbroath, I suppose.’

Nicola laughed out loud and followed it with a little squeal, much to her own amused disgust.

‘David Lindsay. How the hell are you?’

‘I’m good, thanks, a wee bit tipsy, truth be told. How the hell are you back?’

‘Pretty good, pretty good.’ Nicola found herself laughing again. ‘Well, I suppose the appropriate cliché is long time no see, isn’t it? I’m guessing that you are the David Lindsay who works for Still Waters, then, and that you got my rambling email today?’

‘I am indeed the Dave Lindsay of Still Waters fame, although for how much longer, Christ only knows. And I did get your email, yes, although it wasn’t really rambling at all, it was… it was nice to hear from you after so long. Listen Nicola… I… I suppose I don’t really know why I phoned, except that you mentioned in your email that I was welcome to call any time, so, well, here I am phoning you. I hope it’s not a bad time or anything… is it?’

‘No, it’s fine, I’m glad you called. So, what do you think then?’

There was a silence down the line, followed by what sounded to Nicola like glugging.

‘Think about what,’ said David cautiously.

‘The reunion.’

‘Oh yeah, the reunion. I don’t really think it’s my bag, if you know what I mean. I’ve never even been back there, not once in fifteen years, not since…’

‘Don’t be soft,’ said Nicola, deliberately filling the gap David had left at the end of his sentence. ‘It’s the same for everyone, David. I don’t suppose anyone’s seen anyone else for years, but that’s kind of the point, I guess. Everyone’s in the same boat. Come along, it’ll be a laugh. And even if it’s shit, it’ll be a shit laugh, if you know what I mean.’

‘All the same…’

There was that glugging noise again.

‘What are you drinking?’ said Nicola.

‘What?’

‘What are you drinking? I can hear you slugging away on something.’

‘Oh, whisky. Lagavulin.’

‘An Islay, very nice.’

‘You know about whisky?’

‘I know about a lot of things, none of it very useful. I’m on the Chenin Blanc myself. Are you at home?’

‘Yeah, and you?’

‘Afraid so. All on my lonesome. How sad is that, sitting at home drinking alone watching shite telly on a Friday night.’

‘Snap.’

‘So, listen David Lindsay from Arbroath,’ said Nicola, ‘are you sure about the reunion? You can’t be persuaded to come along, keep me company amongst the scary freaks that all our ex-classmates will have turned into?’

‘How do you know I’ve not turned into a scary freak?’

Nicola laughed, wiggled her nose a little and took a swig of wine.

‘That’s a very good question. I suppose I don’t. But then the same goes for me. Maybe we’re the scary freaks, and everyone else has turned out normal. Shall we go to the reunion and find out?’

‘I really don’t think so.’

‘Tell you what, why don’t we meet up, and I’ll have a go at talking you round in person?’

Nicola was surprised at the idea which leapt from her mouth before it had even properly formed in her brain. There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Did he want to meet up with her? Did she want to meet up with him?

‘Why not?’ she heard coming down the line at her. ‘Where and when did you have in mind?’

She had to think on her feet, she hadn’t expected this at all.

‘What are you up to tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Nothing yet.’

‘OK, I’ve got a few hours spare while Amy’s at a friend’s birthday party, so how about if you meet me outside the Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street at two o’clock. How does that sound?’

‘Cool.’ Then a pause. ‘Who’s Amy?’

‘Oh shit, didn’t I say already? Amy’s my daughter.’

‘You have a daughter?’

‘Very well deduced from my last statement. Yes, I have a daughter. A gorgeous little eight-year-old who is equal parts sweet angel and stroppy bitch. Do you have any kids?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I guess we can do all this chat tomorrow,’ said Nicola. ‘If you still want to meet.’

‘Sure, why wouldn’t I?’

‘Just checking. Right, two o’clock outside the museum. I’ll see you there?’

‘OK. Have a nice evening, sitting in drinking on your own.’

‘Right back at you. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah. See you.’

Nicola pressed ‘end call’. What just happened? Had she just organized a bloody date? No, it was just two old school friends meeting for a chat. After fifteen years? OK, that seemed slightly odd, to just arrange to meet like that after so long, but where was the harm in it? She re-ran the conversation in her head, what she could remember of it. He didn’t have kids, but she didn’t know if he was married or not. Mind you, now she came to think about it, she hadn’t explained her situation (or lack of one) with Amy’s dad either. So they were quits on that score. What did it matter anyway, she wasn’t looking for anything out of this, just to meet up with someone she knew and quite liked at school to swap stories about how their lives had turned out.

He had seemed… well, she didn’t really know how he seemed on the phone. Cheery? A bit pissed? Maybe he was really drunk and he wouldn’t remember the conversation in the morning. She would go to the museum, see if he turned up. She loved that place anyway, ever since they’d tacked it on to the old Royal Museum a few years back. Of course you couldn’t keep the whole history of a country in one turreted building, but it was a good start, and she liked the peace, the airiness and the dignity of the ancient past that the place seemed to hold, despite being new.

Yes, she would go to the museum tomorrow, and see what happened. What the hell harm could it do?