"Fucking load, cunt!" Andy screamed at the gun.

I got up, suddenly feeling cold. I hadn't felt like this when I'd seen him firing the shotgun. It hadn't occurred to me to feel frightened of him then. Now it did. I wasn't at all sure I was doing the right thing but I got up and started towards him as he finally got the clip to slide into the gun and snick home.

"Hey, Andy," I said. "Man, come on…"

He glared up at me as though seeing me for the first time. His face was red and blotchy and streaked with tears. "Don't you fucking start, Colley, you little cunt; you let me down too, remember?"

"Hey, hey," I said, putting my hands out, and retreating.

Andy crashed into the door, opened it and almost fell out into the landing. I followed him down the stairs, listening to him curse and shout; in the front hall he tried to get a jacket on over his clothes but couldn't get it to fit over his hand holding the gun. He hauled the front door open so hard that when it hit the stop the stained-glass panel shattered. I looked woozily around for Mr and Mrs Gould but there was no sign of them. Andy slammed the heel of his hand off the half of the storm door that was still closed, then fell out into the night.

I went after him; he was trying to get into the Land Rover. I stood beside him while he cursed at the keys and thumped the side window. He put the gun sideways in his mouth to give him two free hands and I thought about trying to grab it off him but I thought I'd probably kill one of us and even if I didn't I was no match for him and he'd just take it off me again.

"Andy, man," I said, trying to sound calm, "come on; this is crazy. Come on. Don't be insane, man. Killing this dickhead Halziel isn't going to bring Clare back —»

"Shut up!" Andy yelled, throwing the keys down and grabbing me by the collar and slamming me back against the side of the Landie. "Shut the fuck up, you stupid little shit! I fucking know nothing'll bring her back! I know that!" He banged my head against the Land Rover's side window. "I just want to be sure that there'll be one stupid incompetent fuck less in the world!"

"But — " I said.

"Ah, fuck off!"

He hit me in the face with the gun; an inefficient, glancing blow with more chaotic anger than directed malice behind it; I fell down, correspondingly, more because I felt I ought to than because I was actually knocked out. Still hurt, though. I lay on the gravel, face up. It was only then I realised it was raining.

I worried distantly about being shot and killed. Then Andy slammed the gun side-on against the Land Rover and kicked the door.

"Christ!" he bellowed. He kicked the door again. "Christ!"

I was getting wet. I could feel water seeping through my jumper and making my back damp.

Andy bent down and looked at me. His eyes screwed up.

"You all right?"

"Yeah," I said wearily.

He flicked something on the gun and stuffed it down the back of his cords, then held a hand out to me. I put my hand up to his. I remembered William and Andy, balanced on the chair under the old hovercraft.

He pulled me up. "Sorry I hit you," he said.

"Sorry I was a prat."

"Oh, man, Christ…" He put his head on my shoulder, breathing hard but not crying. I patted his head.

Still thinking.

Yvonne and I at South Queensferry a couple of summers ago, across the road from the Hawes Inn at the slipway underneath the tall stone piers of the rail-bridge, the mile-wide river bright before us, people promenading along pavements and down the pier, an occasional smell of frying onions from the snack bar beside the Inshore Lifeboat shed. We were there to witness William getting to grips with his brand-new Jet Ski; this process seemed to consist largely of getting on, powering away, trying to turn too fast and falling off in an extravagant splash. His big blond head kept coming up, shaking once and then bobbing through the water as he struck out for the machine. There were another three Jet Skis buzzing around on that part of the river and a few water-skiers with their big-engined speedboats, all creating a fair old racket, but we could still hear William laughing; the guy thought buying a frighteningly expensive piece of machinery and spending most of your time falling off it into the water was just the most enormous wheeze.

"What do you actually use these things for?" I asked.

"What, Jet Skis?" Yvonne said, leaning on the sea wall and clinking ice around in her fruit juice. "Fun." She watched William bank into a turn, narrowly miss another Jet Ski and plough into the wash of a water-ski boat, sending William — in a new variation on his repertoire of falls — somersaulting over the handlebars of the Jet Ski and flopping on his back into the water in a cloud of spray. His laughter whooped above the revving motors. He waved to show he was all right, then swam back to the floating machine, still laughing. Yvonne put her sunglasses on. "They're for fun; that's what they're for."

"Fun," I said, nodding. William was still laughing. I watched Yvonne watching him. He waved again as he got onto the Jet Ski. She waved back. Listlessly, I thought.

Yvonne was slim and muscled in shorts and T-shirt. Her breasts were pushed up by the wall she was leaning against. We had been lovers for a year or so. She shook her head gently as William gunned the machine's engine again. I leant on the wall beside her.

"Do you ever think about leaving him?" I asked her quietly.

She paused, turned to me, put her sunglasses down her nose and looked at me over them. "No?" she said.

And there was a question in her voice; it was asking me why I'd asked such a thing.

I shrugged. "I just wondered."

She waited for a family to pass by, eating ice-creams, then she said, "Cameron, I've no intention of leaving William."

I shrugged again, sorry I'd asked now. "Like I say, it just occurred to me."

"Well, un-occur it." She glanced at where William was bumping enthusiastically across the waves, miraculously still upright. She put a hand out and briefly touched my arm. "Cameron," she said, and her voice was tender, "you're the excitement in my life; you do things for me William couldn't even imagine. But he's my husband, and even if we do stray now and again, we'll always be an item." She narrowed her eyes then added. "… probably." She looked at him again as he executed a slower turn, wobbling but upright. "I mean, if he ever gave me AIDS I'd give him a Colombian necktie —»

"Eugh," I said. I'd seen a photograph of one of those; they cut your throat and pull your tongue out through the slit. Surprisingly big, the human tongue. "You told him that?"

She laughed once. "Yeah. He said if I left him he'd demand custody of the Merc."

I turned and looked at the subtly tarted, much breathed-upon 300 sitting at the kerb, then made a show of sizing up Yvonne.

I shrugged. "Fair enough," I said, turning to look out across the water and drinking my pint. She kicked me on the knee.

Later, when we were helping William take the Jet Ski out of the water, some very loud people — all wearing black leather jackets with BMW logos — arrived with a gleaming black Range Rover and a big black ski boat. They demanded that everybody get out of their way so they could launch their boat, while people who'd been there for the best of the tide were already bringing their craft out. Their triple-engined ski boat had blocked the exit to the road and when people asked them to move it the BMW people started arguing. I even heard one of them claiming to have booked the slipway.

There was impasse for about ten minutes. We got the Jet Ski onto its trailer but William's Merc was one of the cars trapped on the slip; he tried to reason with the BMW people, then sat in the car and sulked. Yvonne seemed silently furious, then announced she was going up to the lifeboat shed to buy some souvenir crap or whatever.