Footsteps clattered and a shadow came from the right of me. I looked round to see Jamie.

"Haw- ha — ha — " he gasped, putting one hand on another pump to steady himself as he bent over a little and looked at his feet, the other hand on a knee, his chest heaving. "Here — ha here- ha — here you — ha — are. Fffwwaaw…." He sat down on the plinth supporting the pumps and stared at the dark glass of the office for a while. I sat, too, slumped against the pump, letting the last drops fall free. I stumbled back and sat down heavily on the plinth, then staggered upright and pulled my cords back up.

"What did you do that for?" Jamie said, still panting.

I waved at him, struggling to do my belt up. I was starting to feel sick again, getting magnified wafts of pub smoke off my clothes.

"Saw-" I started to say "Sorry', then the word turned into a heave. That anti-social part of my brain suddenly thought about the greasy eggs and bacon again and my stomach geysered. I doubled up, retching and heaving, feeling my guts contract like a balling fist inside me; involuntary, alive, like a woman must feel with a kicking child. My throat was rasped with the force of the jet. Jamie caught me as I almost fell over. I stood there like a half-opened penknife, splattering the forecourt noisily. Jamie shoved one hand down the back of my cords to keep me from falling on my face, and put the other hand on to my forehead, murmuring something. I went on being sick, my stomach starting to hurt badly now; my eyes were full of tears, my nose was running and my whole head felt like a ripe tomato, ready to burst. I fought for breath between heaves, snatching down flecks of vomit and coughing and spewing at the same time. I listened to myself make a horrible noise like Eric going crazy over the phone, and hoped that nobody was passing and could see me in such an undignified and weak position. I stopped, felt better, then started again and felt ten times worse. I moved to one side with Jamie helping me and went down on my hands and knees on a comparatively clean part of the concrete where the oil stains looked old. I coughed and spluttered and gagged a few times, then fell back into Jamie's arms, bringing my legs up to my chin to ease the ache in my stomach muscles.

"Better now?" Jamie said. I nodded. I tipped forward so that I rested on both buttocks and heels, my head between my knees. Jamie patted me. "Just a minute, Frankie lad." I felt him go off for a few seconds. He came back with some coarse paper towels from the forecourt dispenser and wiped my mouth with one bit and the rest of my face with another bit. He even took them and put them in the litter-bin.

Though I still felt drunk, my stomach ached and my throat felt like a couple of hedgehogs had had a fight in it, I did feel a lot better. "Thanks," I managed, and started trying to stand. Jamie helped me to my feet.

"By God, what a state to get yourself in, Frank."

"Aye," I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and looking round to see that we were still alone. I clapped Jamie on the shoulder a couple of times and we made for the street.

We walked up the deserted street with me breathing deeply and Jamie holding me by one elbow. The girl had gone, obviously enough, but I wasn't sorry.

"Why'd you run off like that?"

I shook my head. "Needed to go."

"What?" Jamie laughed. "Why didn't you just say?"

"Couldn't."

"Just "cause there was a girl there?"

"No," I said, and coughed. "Couldn't speak. Too drunk."

"What?" laughed Jamie.

I nodded. "Yeah," I said. He laughed again and shook his head. We kept on walking Jamie's mother was still up and she made us some tea. She's a big woman who's always in a green housecoat when I see her in the evenings after the pub when, as often happens, her son and I end up at her house. She's not too unpleasant, even if she does pretend to like me more than I know she really does.

"Och, laddie, you're not looking your best. Here, sit down and I'll get some tea on the go. Ach, you wee lamb." I was planted in a chair in the living-room of the council house while Jamie hung up our jackets. I could hear him jumping in the hall.

"Thank you," I croaked, throat dry.

"There you are, pet. Now, do you want me to turn on the fire for you? Are you too cold?"

I shook my head, and she smiled and nodded and patted me on the shoulder and padded off to the kitchen. Jamie came in and sat on the couch next to my chair. He looked at me and grinned and shook his head.

"What a state. What a state!" He clapped his hands and rocked forward on the couch, his feet sticking out straight in front of him. I rolled my eyes and looked away. "Never mind, Frankie lad. A couple of cups of tea and you'll be fine."

"Huh," I managed, and shivered.

I left about one o'clock in the morning, more sober, and awash with tea. My stomach and throat were almost back to normal, though my voice still sounded harsh. I bade Jamie and his mother goodnight and walked on through the outskirts of town to the track heading for the island, then down the track in blackness, sometimes using my small torch, towards the bridge and the house.

It was a quiet walk through the marsh and dune land and the patchy pasture. Apart from the few noises I made on the path, all I could hear was the very occasional and distant roar of heavy trucks on the road through town. The clouds covered most of the sky and there was little light from the moon, and none ahead of me at all.

I remembered once, in the middle of summer two years ago, when I was coming down the path in the late dusk after a day's walking in the hills beyond the town, I saw in the gathering night strange lights, shifting in the air over and far beyond the island. They wavered and moved uncannily, glinting and shifting and burning in a heavy, solid way no thing should in the air. I stood and watched them for a while, training my binoculars on them and seeming, now and again in the shifting images of light, to discern structures around them. A chill passed through me then and my mind raced to reason out what I was seeing. I glanced quickly about in the gloom, and then back to those distant, utterly silent towers of flickering flame. They hung there in the sky like faces of fire looking down on the island, like something waiting.

Then it came to me, and I knew.

A mirage, a reflection of layers on air out to sea. I was watching the gas-flares of oil-rigs maybe hundreds of kilometres away, out in the North Sea. Looking again at those dim shapes around the flame, they did appear to be rigs, vaguely made out in their own gassy glare. I went on my way happy after that — indeed, happier than I had been before I had seen the strange apparitions — and it occurred to me that somebody both less logical and less imaginative would have jumped to the conclusion that what they had seen were UFOs.

I got to the island eventually. The house was dark. I stood looking at it in the darkness, just aware of its bulk in the feeble light of a broken moon, and I thought it looked even bigger than it really was, like a stone-giant's head, a huge moonlit skull full of shapes and memories, staring out to sea and attached to a vast, powerful body buried in the rock and sand beneath, ready to shrug itself free and disinter itself on some unknowable command or cue.

The house stared out to sea, out to the night, and I went into it.