Mrs and Ms Cramond made the most of their big house; they had social evenings, they entertained; their parties became moderately celebrated. They would put people up; poets giving readings at the university, a visiting painter trying to sell some work to a gallery, a writer the book shop had invited to a signing session. Some evenings there would be a whole circle of people he didn't recognise at the place; they usually looked less well-off than Andrea's friends, and tended to eat and drink a lot more. Mrs Cramond spent half the day, it seemed, baking cakes and quiches and bread. He worried that even in her widowhood Mrs Cramond was still spending all her time in her kitchen making things for people, but Andrea told him not to be stupid; her mother loved seeing people enjoy something she'd made. He accepted this but watched some of the itinerant denizens of the house stuff cakes and the odd bottle of wine into coat pockets with a nagging sense of vicarious exploitation.

'These people are intellecutals,' he told Andrea once. 'You're starting a salon; you're becoming a goddamned blue stocking!'

She just smiled.

Andrea bought a litter of four Siamese cats from a friend. One died; she renamed the two males Franklin and Phineas and the sleek female Fat Freddie; damned nostalgia, he called it. Somebody gave Mrs Cramond a King Charles spaniel; she called it Cromwell.

Just getting ready to go round to the house was enough to make him feel good; driving there would produce an almost childlike thrill in him; the house was another home, a warm and hospitable place. Sometimes, especially when he'd had a few to drink, he had to fight an absurd feeling of sentimentality at the bond between mother and daughter.

He added a Citroen CX to the GTi and the Range Rover, then sold all three and bought an Audi Quattro. He went out to Yemen on business, and stood once in the ruins that had been Mocha, on the shore of the Red Sea; he saw the warm wind from Africa move the sand grains round his feet, and sensed the steady harsh indifference of the desert, its calm continuance, the spirit of those ancient lands. He stroked his hand over the age-worn, pitted stones, and watched where the waves fell blue, exploding white fists of silk thunder on the open, golden palm of the shore.

Things went on; Lennon got shot, Dylan got religion. He could never decide which depressed him most. He was working in Yemen when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon because a man was shot in London, and when the Argentinians went ashore at Port Stanley. He didn't learn that his brother, Sammy, was with the Task Force until after it had sailed. When he got back to Edinburgh he argued with his friends; sure the Argentinians ought to have the bloody islands, he said, but how the hell could revolutionary parties support a fascist junta's own little piece of imperialism? Why did there always have to be a right side and wrong one? Why not just say, A curse on both your houses?

His brother came back, unhurt. He still had arguments about the war; with Sammy, his dad, his radical friends. By the time the next election came round, he was starting to think maybe his pals had been right after all.

'Awww, come on!' he said, despairing. Another healthy Labour majority wiped out, votes leeched by the SDP; another surprise Conservative win. The pundits were predicting the Tories would get less of the vote than last time, but increase their majority by a hundred seats, perhaps more. 'Aww fuck!'

'This is becoming monotonous,' Andrea said, reaching for the whisky. Margaret Thatcher appeared on the television screen, glowing with victory.

'Off!' he screamed, hiding under the sheets. Andrea stabbed at the remote control unit; the screen went dark. 'Oh ... God," he said from beneath the sheets. 'And don't talk to me about my top rate of tax'

'Never said a word, kid'

Tell me it's all just a bad dream.'

'It's all just a bad dream.'

'Really? Is it?'

'Hell no, it's real; I was just telling you what you wanted to hear.'

'Those idiots!' he fumed to Stewart. 'Another four years with that dingbat in charge! Christ al-fucking-mighty! A senile clown surrounded by a gang of xenophobic reactionaries!'

'Unelected xenophobic reactionaries,' Stewart pointed out. Ronald Reagan had just been elected for another term; half the people who could have voted in the election, hadn't.

'Why don't I get a vote?' he raged. 'My dad lives spitting distance from Coulport, Faslane and the Holy Loch; if that buffoon's liver-spotted finger hits the button my old man's dead; probably all of us are; you, me, Andrea, Shona, and the kids; everybody I love ... so why the fuck don't I get a vote?'

'No annihilation without representation,' Stewart said, thoughtfully. Then, 'Still, on the subject of unelected reactionaries, what d'you think the Politbureau is?'

'A fucking sight more responsible than that squad of gung-ho shitheads'

'... Aye, fair enough. Your round."

The house at Moray Place, residence of Mrs and Ms Cramond, was now quite well known, especially at festival time. You couldn't walk into the place without tripping over some up-and-coming artist, or an authoritative new voice in Scottish fiction, or some moody kids with acne who dragged synths and practice amps from room to room, and commandeered the Revox for days at a time. The Last Chance Salon, he called it. Andrea had settled down to a life she found thoroughly fine; still working in the shop, translating Russian books, writing articles, playing the piano, drawing and painting, socialising and partying, visiting pals, holidaying in Paris, going to films and concerts and plays with him, and to the opera and ballet with her mother.

Meeting her one day at the airport, after another jaunt to Paris, he watched her; she walked confidently, head up, out of Customs; she wore a broad, bright red hat, brilliant blue jacket, red skirt, blue tights and shiny red leather boots. Her eyes sparkled, her skin glowed; her face broadened into a wide smile when she saw him. She was thirty-three years old and she had never looked better. He felt, at that instant, an odd amalgam of emotions; love certainly, but also envious admiration. He envied her her happiness, her assurance, her calm way with the troubles and traumas of life, the way she treated everything as one might treat a child making up a story the child really believed in; not patronisingly, but with the same mock-serious frown, the same mixture of ironic detachment and affection, even love. He remembered his talks with the advocate, and could see something of the old man's personality in Andrea.

You're a lucky woman Andrea Cramond, he thought, as she took his arm, there in the airport lounge. Not because of me, and not as lucky as me in one way, because I have more of your time than anybody else, but otherwise ...

Let it go on, he thought. Don't let the idiots blow up the world and don't let anything else terrible happen. Steady, kid; who are we talking to here? He sold the bike soon afterwards. His father fell and broke his hip that winter. He looked very small and frail when he visited him in hospital, and much older. In the spring he needed a hernia operation, and fell again, not long after he'd left hospital. He broke a leg and a collar bone. 'Have tae take mair waiter with it,' he told his son, and refused to come and live with him in Edinburgh, because his friends were here. Morag and her husband also offered to take him in, and Jimmy wrote from Australia to say why didn't he come out for a few months? But the old man didn't want to move from his own area. He was in hospital for longer this time, and when they let him out he couldn't put back on the weight he'd lost. A home-help came round every morning. She found him, apparently asleep, by the fire one day, a small smile on his face. It had been his heart, too. The doctor said he probably hadn't felt a thing.