I left to do some shopping before the late-night closing. I got myself a couple of books and the new Nirvana record. I bought Nan a winter coat. She’s been a chocolate addict since wartime rationing, so I couldn’t resist a giant bar of Toblerone. On the bus back I met Tommy Little, whom I’d known in the army, Tommy staying in and making sergeant and me getting kicked out and ending up in the brig, in, of all places, Saint Helena-a nasty, windswept shithole whose other famous military prisoner, Napoleon, died mysteriously. So you could say I got off lightly. We laughed and Tommy said that I was a wild man and I said he was on his way to general.

Another bus, the road, the long walk up the hill. The ever-present conspiracy of fog and rain.

Nan was watching Coronation Street. No problem to smuggle in a hidden coat. We had a late dinner of Ulster fry: potato bread and bacon, soda bread and egg.

She only ever watched the soaps, so she hadn’t even heard about the morning bombing. I didn’t enlighten her. She would have been upset. I produced the Toblerone and Nan practically laughed with delight.

Oh, you shouldn’t have, she said.

I picked up a wee bit of work today, I explained, and she made the tea and we ate the chocolate and I helped her get the last clues in her crossword book.

The darkness filled, the fires went out. I showered and retired to bed. The late-night noises of the house and the street began around me. The pipes in the attic water tank. The dogs communing across the town.

Mrs. Clawson yelling with only half a heart: Were ye on the dander again, you drunken scut?

Below me the creaking of boards and beams as the chimney took away the last heat from the fire and the house chilled and the floor timbers shrank and cooled.

And I was gone, off in a deep, hard-work sleep…

Late next morning a man from the dole office was waiting for me. A big man with glasses, tweed jacket, blue shirt, red tie, and a clipboard, but who otherwise, in different circumstances entirely, could possibly have been an ok sort of bloke. He should really have been a skinny wee fella with greasy hair, but this was a tough part of town and he was here on business. He was sipping Nan’s tea and eating the last piece of Toblerone. I sat down and the man had news.