I tried to keep up. I looked at the bottle in the bag. "Couldn't you just leave the whisky, I'll drink it all, wake up in the morning — no, make that the afternoon — with a head that feels like you hit me over the skull with the bottle, and you sleep in the car ready for that long and demanding journey down the notoriously dangerous A74 tomorrow?"

Ash shook her head.

We got back to Grant Street. I looked up, saw some lights on in the flat. Maybe, I thought, Ash would be so turned on by the sounds of frantic coupling emanating from Gav and Aunt Janice in the bedroom that she'd tear my clothes off. Or maybe Norris and his pals would distract her from this crazed idea of getting air-locked drunk by suggesting a friendly game of cards.

Ash followed my gaze. She held the bottle up in front of my eyes. "Ready for this, Prentice?"

"Drink doesn't solve anything, you know," I told her. "Just dissolves brain cells."

"I know," she said. "I'm working on the principle that most people are okay unless they get muroculous with drink, when they become arse-holes; you're behaving like an arse-hole now, so maybe drink'll make you okay."

I tried to look as sceptical as I could. "I bet you believe in crop circles, too."

"Prentice, I believe you seem determined to fuck your life up, and I just want to know why."

"Oh," I said brightly. "That's easy; my affections have been rejected by the one I love and her carnality is being most thoroughly investigated by my elder and smarter brother on a more or less hourly basis, so I am spurned and she is spermed; my father believes his children should be free to make up their own minds, but preferably only out of the spare-parts that he provides… And apart from that… I mean the exams and getting nicked and stuff… Well," I sighed, looking up to the night sky, where the clouds were starting to blot out the few stars that the city lights did not obscure. I spread my arms wide."… I'm just a waster."

Ash looked at me. I could see her chest move in and out inside the light cotton jacket. "Naw, Prentice," she said quietly, after a while. "You're just a bairn."

I shrugged. "Maybe. Come on." I indicated the close. "Let's get as drunk as you think we have to, and you can tell me all the reasons I'm so childish." I glanced at my watch as we headed for the stairs. "Better get started, though; we've only got all night."

We climbed the stairs, reached the flat.

"You know," Ash was saying, breathing hard and looking down the stair-well as I opened the door. "I don't know anybody who lives in a flat who doesn't live on the top floor."

"Friends in high places," I said, opening the door to Janice Rae.

Aunt Janice was clothed (shirt and jeans), which made rather a refreshing change, and standing in the hallway. She looked distraught. Her eyes were red and her mascara had left what appeared to be a diagram of the Los Angeles freeway system down her cheeks. Beyond her Gav stood looking awkward and sheepish. I glanced from Janice to Gav and back again, while Janice looked at me, lip trembling.

Let me guess, I thought; they've finally done it; they've broken the bed.

"Oh, Prentice!" Janice said suddenly, throwing herself at me and enveloping my upper torso in a hug that would have done credit to a grizzly. I wondered what had brought this on, and how to peel Aunt Janice off. What must Ashley be making of all this? (She'd be getting jealous, with any luck.)

Janice pulled away; I could breathe again, and promptly did so.

"Oh, Prentice," she said again, holding my head in both hands and shaking her own. Her eyes closed, she turned her face away, released her hold on my cheekbones and let me go on into the hall. Gav stood by the hall table, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing nervously down at the phone now and again.

He avoided my eyes.

I took a couple of steps forward, then heard something whispered from behind me, and looked back to see Janice hugging Ash, almost violently.

They'd never met before. How shocking, I thought. Where was that traditional British reserve only abandoned for cloying camaraderie under the influence of injuriously vast quantities of alcohol? I wondered, if nervously.

Ash was looking over Janice Rae's shoulder at me, those grey eyes behind the bright red glasses filling with tears.

"Um; you've to phone home," Gav mumbled, apparently addressing his trainers.

"ET or BT?" I heard myself say to him, though the different sections of my brain seemed to have slipped out of synch somehow, and I was aware of all sorts of different things at once, and time seemed to have slowed down and at the same time some part of my brain was racing, trying to come up with some logical explanation for what was going on that didn't involve calamity… and failing.

"It's — " Gav said, this time seemingly directing his remarks to his rugby-shirted chest. "It's your dad," he whispered, and suddenly started to cry.

CHAPTER 12

"This is the Specialist Glass Division," Hamish said, opening a door. They found themselves in a long corridor with one glass wall that looked out into a bright, modern, open-plan and spacious area. Everything gleamed and the few people visible wore white coats; apart from the exposed brickwork of a couple of rotund furnaces, linked to the ceiling by shining metal ductwork, the place looked more like a laboratory than a factory.

There was a silence none of the three brothers seemed inclined to fill. Hamish, an immaculate white coat over his three piece suit, gazed with a rapt expression at the almost static panorama on the far side of the glass. Kenneth looked bored. Rory stood at Janice Rae's side, humming something monotonous, one arm round Janice's waist and attempting to tickle her, just above her right hip. "Very clean," Janice said eventually.

"Yes," Hamish said gravely. He nodded slowly, still observing the scene beyond the glass. "It has to be, of course." He turned to the tables against the wall behind them, on which lay various glassy-looking objects, some in display cabinets, most loose, all with explanatory notes stuck to the wall above them. From a wooden plinth on one table, Hamish picked up a dull black cone that looked a little like a Viking helmet without the horns.

"This is a missile nose-cone," he said, turning the cone over in his hands. He held it out to Janice. She took it.

"Hmm. Quite heavy," she said. Rory tickled her again and she nudged him.

"Yes, heavy," Hamish said gravely, taking it back and carefully replacing it on its wooden block. "Strictly speaking, this is a glass ceramic rather than ordinary glass," he said, adjusting the precise position of the nose cone on the plinth. "The basis is lithium aluminosilicate, which withstands heat very well. Cooker hobs are made from this sort of thing… and obviously missiles need to withstand a lot of heat from friction with the air."

"Obviously," Kenneth said. He and Rory exchanged looks.

Hamish turned to another exhibit; a broad bowl, also dull and dark, and over half a metre across, it was like a gigantic plate with no lip. He lifted an edge so that they could look underneath, where it was criss-crossed with a lattice of deep ribs.

"Satellite aerial?" Kenneth said.

"No," Hamish said, though a hint of a smile crossed his dour face. "No, this is a substrate for an astronomical telescope mirror."

"Like the one Fergus has in the castle?" Rory asked.

That's right. All the substrates and optics for Mr Urvill's telescope were made here. Though of course they were on a smaller scale than this piece." Hamish lowered the edge of the bowl and flicked a bit of dust off one edge. "This is made from the same type of material as the nose cone there. It resists distortion under thermal shock."