"Just at the moment, Prentice, I don't think there'd be any shortage of volunteers to help you on your way, if you were serious."

"I am."

"Stop being melodramatic, Prentice; it doesn't suit you. Sarcasm's more your forte."

"Oh my God."

"Prentice," mum said, putting her hand on my head and running her fingers through my hair. "Prentice…»

I looked up, straightened. Mum's eyes looked red. She shook her head. "Prentice, why are you so stupid with your cleverness sometimes?"

I took a deep breath. "Wish I knew, mum," I said, and sniffed, eyes smarting. Best not to say anything about it running in the family.

She took me in her arms, hugged me. I was surprised, as I always was at such moments, how slim and small she felt.

After a bit we let go of each other. She glanced in the mirror and declared I had wrecked her eyes for the rest of the day. Then we went in to Hamish and Tone's for tea and apologies, and later drove to the castle for what would have been the most excruciating interval of my life if Verity and Lewis had still been there, but they weren't; they had taken off in the car to visit some friends of Verity's who lived in Ardnamurchan, and wouldn't be back until late tomorrow at the earliest.

Mum took me back chez Hamish and Tone; she agreed to pass on my expressions of contrition to my father. She'd wanted me to come to Lochgair and say sorry to him there, but I had begged for mercy, and — rather to my surprise — been granted it.

I had already decided that tomorrow I would take the train back to what was now your official European City of Culture for the following twelve months. In theory, Verity and Lewis were meant to be giving me a lift in four days time, but that was obviously out, now.

I had to promise mum I'd write to each of them, and apologise in person at the first possible opportunity, and also that I'd stop off at Lochgair before I returned to Glasgow, to see dad.

Ashley met me in the Jac that night, listened to my woes, bought me drink when I ran out of money (I'm sure I was short-changed at the bar) even though she probably had less dosh than I did, and listened to my woes all over again when we went back to her mum's and sat up till God knows when, talking low so we wouldn't wake Dean in the next room. She made me coffee, gave me hugs, and at one point I fell asleep, and was at peace for a while, and woke up sprawled on the floor, my head on her lap, one gentle hand stroking my head. "Ash," I croaked, "you're a saint."

She just smiled.

A last cup of coffee and I left; back to H and T's in time for a few hours" fitful sleep; then up and away, run to the station by Aunt Antonia. I only just caught the train, and when, a quarter of an hour later, we pulled in to Lochgair, and I should have got my bag and quit the Sprinter and walked to the house and finally have talked — sober, and not in the context of a game of Alternative Charades — to my father, and apologised, and spent the three hours until the next Glasgow train with my mother and father in some longed-for spirit of reconciliation, I did nothing of the sort.

Instead I put my head to one side so that it rested against the cold glass of the window, closed my eyes and let my mouth hang open a little. I stayed like that for the minute or so we waited at the Lochgair station platform, and didn't stir again — yawning convincingly for any other passengers who might be watching — until we were crossing the viaduct at Succothmore.

Still stuck on the track within sight of Janice Rae's flat, I got up out of my seat, took down my bag and fished out the file mum had brought from the house. I found some much-Tippexed poems typed on foolscap, plus about twenty or so printed A4 pages which looked like they were part of a play or film script. 1 selected a page at random and started reading.

Lord:… And I see them as they will be, dead and torn; shocked, mutilated and alone, on battlefields or by long roads, in ditches or against high walls, in echoing white corridors and misty woods, in fields, by rivers; dumped in holes, thrown in piles; neglected and absolved. Or, if living on, filled with petty, bitter memories, and a longing for the war they fought to end. Oh captain, I see in this my ending, what I think you didn't start to glimpse with your most cunning intuition; the soldiers are always the real refugees. Their first victim is themselves, their life taken from them well before — as though seeking a replacement from another freed —

But I couldn't take any more. I put the papers in the folder and the folder in my bag, then stuffed that under my seat.

I looked out at the rain instead; it was cheerier.

I'd avoided stopping off to see mum and dad. It made my eyes close, every time I thought about it. What was wrong with me?

Well, I thought; they made me. They produced me; their genes. And they brought me up. School and university still hadn't changed me as much as they had; maybe even the rest of my life could never compensate for their formative effect. If I was too embarrassed, too full of shame to go and see them, it wasn't just my fault; it was theirs too, because of the way they'd brought me up (God, I thought I'd stopped using that excuse when I left Lochgair Primary School). But there was a grain of truth in there.

Wasn't there?

And hell, I thought; I had been tired; I was tired still, and I would phone that evening — definitely — and say I'd fallen asleep, and nobody would be too bothered, and after all a chap could only cope with so much sorrow-saying in one day… of course I'd phone. A bit of soft soap, a bit of flannel, like dad would say.

No sweat; I could charm them. I'd make everything all right.

Still, it was the hangover of that piece of moral cowardice at Lochgair station, along with everything else, that led to me feeling so profoundly awful with myself that evening (after the train finally did get into Queen Street and I walked back, soaked and somehow no longer hungry, in the rain to the empty flat in Grant Street), that mum had to call me there, because I hadn't been able to bring myself to phone her and dad… and I still managed to feign sleep and a little shame and a smattering of sorrow and reassure her as best I could that really I was all right, yes of course, not to worry, I was fine, thanks for calling… and so of course after that felt even worse.

I made a cup of coffee. I was feeling so bad that I treated it as a kind of moral victory that I was able to empty most of the water out of the obviously Gav-filled kettle and leave the level at the minimum mark. I stood in the kitchen waiting for the water to heat up with a distinct feeling of eco-smugness.

It was just as I was sitting down in the living room with my cup of coffee that I realised I'd left my bag on the train.

I couldn't believe it. I remembered getting out of my seat, putting on my jacket, wondering about trying to get something to eat, deciding I didn't feel hungry, glancing at the empty luggage rack, and then heading through the station and up the road. With no bag.

How could I? I put the coffee down, leapt out of my chair and over the couch, ran to the phone, and got through, ten minutes later, to the station. Lost Property was closed; call tomorrow.

I lay in bed that night, trying to remember what had been in the bag. Clothes, toiletries, one or two books, a couple of presents… and the folder with Uncle Rory's papers in it; both folders, including the one I hadn't read yet.

No, I told myself, as panic tried to set in. It was inconceivable that I'd lost the bag forever. It would turn up. I had always been lucky that way. People were generally good. Even if somebody had picked it up, maybe they had done so by mistake. But probably a guard had spotted it and it was right now sitting in some staff-room in Queen Street station, or Gallanach. Or maybe — in a siding only a mile or two from where I lay — a cleaner's brush was at this moment encountering the bag, wedged back under the seat… But I'd get it back. It couldn't just disappear; it had to find its way back to me. It had to.