"7970."

"Uh… hi?"

"Andy, is that you?"

"Uh, yeah. Who is this?" The voice is slow, sleepy-sounding.

"What do you mean, "Who is this?" You rang me. It's Cameron. The man who left a message on your answering-machine all of ten minutes ago."

"Cameron…"

"Andy! For Christ's sake. It's me: Cameron, childhood buddy; your best fucking friend. Remember me? Wake up!" I can't believe Andy sounds so sleepy. Okay, it is midnight but Andy never used to hit the hay much before two at the earliest.

"… Oh, yeah, Cameron. I thought I recognised that number. How you doing?"

"I'm all right. Yourself?"

"Oh, you know; yeah. Yeah, I'm all right. I'm fine."

"You sound stoned."

"Well, you know."

"Look, if it's too late, I'll call some other time —»

"No, no, that's all right."

I'm sitting in the box room of the flat, TV on, sound off, the machine on and the Despot status-screen showing. It's a Friday night and I should be out enjoying myself but I'm waiting for Mr Archer to call and besides I'm frightened if I do anything too enjoyable I'll want a fag, so that's another reason for staying in and watching TV and playing games but just then I started to think about Ares and those five dead guys and the lad in the clink in Baghdad and suddenly I thought, Cameron, you are definitely dealing with something from the desk of Pearl Frotwithe here, and got scared and wanted to hear another human voice so I rang Andy because I owe him a call and I've hardly spoken to him since he was here for a weekend during the summer but got his answer-machine, there in the dark hotel only a couple of hundred kilometres away though he still sounds faint and distant. I think I can hear his voice echoing in the spaces of that quiet, cold place.

"So, been doing anything exciting?" I ask him.

"Nothing much. Bit of fishing. Been up on the hill. You know. You?"

"Oh, the usual. Fucking about. Covering the story. Hey — I've given up fags."

"Again?"

"No, finally."

"Right. You still fucking that married piece?"

"'Fraid so," I say (and am glad that he can't see the grimace I make when I say this). This is awkward because Andy knows Yvonne and William from our Stirling days; he used to be really friendly with William and, though they seem to have gone their separate ways since, I don't want Andy to know about me and Yvonne. I always worry he'll guess it's her.

"Yeah… What was her name again?"

"I don't think I ever told you," I tell him, laughing and sitting back in the chair.

"Frightened I'll tell somebody?" he says, sounding amused.

"Yeah. I live in perpetual fear our enormous circle of mutual friends will find out."

"Huh. But you should find yourself your own lady."

"Yeah," I say, imitating a stoned-out drawl. "Gotta find ma own chick, like, ma-an."

"Well, you never did take my advice."

"Keep trying. One day."

"You ever go the other way these days?"

"Eh?"

"You know, with guys."

"What? Good grief, no. I mean…" I look at the receiver in my hand. "No," I say.

"Hey, I just wondered."

"Why, do you?" I ask, and then regret the tone because it sounds like I'm at least disapproving if not actually homophobic.

"Na," Andy says. "Na, I don't… I kind of… you know, I lost interest in all that stuff." He chuckles, and I imagine again that I can hear the noise echoing in the dark hotel. "It's just, you know; old habits die hard."

"But they do die," I tell him. "Don't they?"

"I guess so. Usually."

"Shit," I say, leaning forwards and starting Despot running on the screen because I need to be doing something and normally at this point I'd be reaching for the cigarettes. "I was thinking about coming up there sometime soon and dropping in on you. You're not going weird on me, are you, Gould?"

"Cabin fever, man. Highland angst." He laughs again. "No, you come on up. Let me know, like, first, but yeah; be great to see you. Look forward to it. Been too long."

"Well, soon then." I use the mouse to check the game's geo-update. "You done anything with that fucking mansion?"

"Eh? Oh; the place."

"Yeah, the place."

"No, nothing. Nothing's changed."

"Get any of the leaks fixed?"

"No… Oh."

"What?"

"Tell a lie."

"You have fixed the leaks."

"No, I forgot; things have changed."

"What?"

"Well, a couple of the ceilings fell down."

"Ah-ha."

"Well, it's wet up here."

"Nobody hurt, though."

"Hurt? How could anybody be hurt? There's only me here."

"Of course. So there's plenty of room if I want to come and stay but I should bring a golf umbrella or a waterproof sleeping bag or a tent or something, right?"

"No, there are dry rooms here, too. Come on."

"Okay. I don't know when I'll be coming up, but, well, before the end of the year."

"Why not come up, like, next week or something?"

"Ah," I say, thinking. Hell, I could. It all depends what's happening with the various stories I'm involved with, but theoretically I could. I need time off; I need a change of scene. "Okay; why not? Just for a couple of days, probably, but yeah; pencil me in."

"Great. When you going to arrive?"

"Um, say Thursday or Friday. I'll confirm."

"Okay."

We talk a bit more, reliving old times, before I sign off.

I put the phone down and sit there with Despot running but I'm not really paying attention, I'm thinking about my old friend, the ice-child, our wunderkind, archetypal "eighties player and then victim. I was always jealous of him, always somehow yearning for what he had even when I knew I didn't really want it.

And Andy always seemed to be elsewhere, and more involved. Two years before I went to Stirling he'd started at St Andrew's on an Army-sponsored course and by the time the Falklands War began he was a lieutenant in the Angus Rifles. He yomped from San Carlos to Tumbledown, was wounded in a botched attack on an Argentinian position and awarded a DSO. He sent the decoration back when the officer who'd been in charge of the attack was kicked upstairs instead of being court-martialled. Andy left the Army the following year, joined a big London advertising company, did well there (he dreamt up IBM's "Insist On Perfection — We Do" campaign and Guinness's "Pint Taken?" slogan) and then suddenly left to start The Gadget Shop in Covent Garden. Neither Andy nor his partner — another ex-ad-agency man — had any retail experience whatsoever, but they had lots of ideas and a degree of luck, plus they used their contacts in the media (me, for one) to produce a huge free advertising campaign in the shape of articles about themselves and the business. The shop and its mail-order catalogue were an immediate success. In less than five years Andy and his partner opened another twenty branches, made a modest fortune, and then sold out for an immodest one to a big retail chain a couple of months before the stock-market crash of "87.

Andy took six months off, went on a world trip — travelling first class — toured America on a Harley, and cruised round the Caribbean in a yacht. He was on a trans-Saharan trip when his sister Clare died. After the funeral he mooched around the family estate at Strathspeld for a few months, then spent some time in London doing nothing much except seeing old friends and clubbing. After that he seemed to lose it, somehow. He became quiet, then reclusive, and bought a big, old decaying hotel in the western Highlands and retired to live there alone, practically broke apparently and still not really doing anything apart from drinking too much, getting wrecked most nights, going a bit hippy — I mean, like, man — fishing from his dinghy, walking in the hills, and just lying in bed sleeping while the hotel — in a quiet, dark village that was busy once, before they built a new road and the ferry service stopped — crumbles quietly around him.