Winter put a finger to his lips and an arm round her shoulder to guide her into the open doorway. Her eyes widened to see her dad sitting upright in the chair by his bed, quite animated and deep in conversation with a man in his sixties she didn’t recognize. Behind the stranger sat Tony’s uncle Danny.

‘I was there,’ her dad was saying as if proving a point. ‘Me and my brother and our pal Bill. You scored and you would have had another couple but that big goalkeeper of theirs made some cracking saves. Big baldy fella.’

‘Gordy Gillespie. He was a good goalie. Nice bloke as well. We played together at Morton for a season.’

‘Did you? I don’t remember that.’

The stranger laughed. ‘Typical supporter. You only remember us when we played for your team.’

‘Aye, right enough,’ her dad laughed. ‘I always had those blue-tinted glasses on. Always the Rangers for me.’

‘Who is that?’ Narey whispered to Winter. She had a smile spread across her face though. ‘What’s going on?’

He nudged her back from the doorway and whispered a reply. ‘The guy is Bobby McDonald. He used to play centre-forward for Rangers and your dad and your uncle Brian used to watch him from the terraces at Ibrox. He was your dad’s favourite player.’

‘Right . . . So what the hell is he . . . what is he doing here?’

Winter grinned. ‘He’s been to see your dad a couple of times now. There’s a scheme called Football Memories run by Alzheimer’s Scotland. The idea is to stimulate memories by talking about football. I read about it online and thought it might work for your dad. I didn’t want to say anything and get your hopes up but it seems to be helping.’

‘He’s like a different person. But how did you get the player to come in? Wait, don’t tell me, Uncle Danny knows him.’

‘Of course. Come on, let’s go in.’

They walked into the room and her dad looked up at the sound of their footsteps.

‘Rachel! Come in, come in. I need to introduce you. This . . . is Bobby McDonald. The prince of poachers. He played for the Rangers. Bobby, this is my wee girl Rachel.’

They all sat, Narey with one hand holding her dad’s and the other squeezing tight on Winter’s, chatting like it was yesterday - which it was.

She leaned in on her dad while he was in full footballing flow and kissed him on the cheek then turned her head to do the same to Winter.

‘This is amazing. Thank you for doing this.’

‘Shush. You don’t have to thank me. Seeing that silly smile on your face is thanks enough.’

She kissed him again and turned back to listen to talk of a Cup Final when her dad had managed to get the afternoon off work and got home drunk as a lord. For an hour, it was the late 1970s and she was a girl and her dad was her hero and all was well. Murders and bogeymen were kept at bay and the real world could wait till tomorrow.

Chapter 41

Remy had sat with the laptop in front of him for a full hour without hitting a single key other than to wake the computer when it began to snooze. He’d thought a lot in that time but hadn’t actually done anything. It struck him that the same could be said of his entire life.

The home page of the OtherWorld forum sat waiting patiently for him to say hello but he’d shied away from reintroducing himself. Instead he just sat and stared like the awkward, gawky teenager he’d been since he was eight. So much he wanted to say but didn’t dare.

He’d read that you don’t regret the things you have done but the things you haven’t done. There was some truth in that, right enough. If he made a list then top would be failing to ask Gabby out. Properly, that is. Second would be not going to university but that was different. He had to make a choice and he did what he had to do. After that? He wished he’d gone to Machu Picchu, the ancient Incan site in Peru. Or the great Pyramid of Giza, the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing. There was smaller stuff too. Bigger in some senses. He’d never told his dad that he loved him. Because you just don’t, right? Not if you come from Glasgow you don’t. He’d never flown in a helicopter, given blood, owned a dog or drunk real champagne. Regrets, he had a few.

But to say you don’t regret the things you have done . . . well, that just wasn’t true. He still mourned the day he wet himself in Miss Johnson’s class aged six. He bitterly regretted the day he ever thought it was a good idea to try to grow a moustache aged twenty-one. He hated himself for being in the library the night his mother died from cancer. And he wished he’d never walked down the Molendinar Burn.

Maybe it wasn’t about regrets at all. There was nothing you could do about those other than choose to live with them or not. You could, maybe, possibly, avoid future regrets though. By not not doing the thing. By doing it and to hell with the consequences.

After that hour of thinking and no typing, he had finally worked out what he was going to write. It wasn’t much, just a few lines, but he’d convinced himself they were what they had to be. What he hadn’t decided, not quite, was whether he had the guts to send them.

He was nearly there though. One last push. He forced himself to think about why he had to do it, not why he shouldn’t. His fingers fretted over the keyboard and got as far as creating a blank message ready to be filled then hopefully dispatched to the two recipients he had in mind.

He knew it was about his dad, about his mother, about Gabby, about himself. It was about the feel of the dead guy’s body against his. About being a loser his entire life and wanting, aching, to change that. It was about doing the right thing. About doing something. He could stay in the same crappy job, live in the same crappy flat, live the same crappy life and wait till it was time to die or he could do something. It was about him.

He typed. He pressed enter.

Fuck. He’d done it now.

Chapter 42

Saturday morning

Narey had made up her mind to have another chat with Douglas Cairns. The suggestion from his wife’s friend that not only was Jennifer having an affair but that Cairns knew about it made him interesting again. An angry husband and an unfaithful wife made for motivation. He was certainly worth another visit and she wasn’t in the mood to care whether he minded or not.

She made her way to his firm’s offices, and again unannounced pushed through the double doors. The assistant, Chloe, rose to meet her and clearly remembered who she was.

‘Are you here to see Mr Cairns? He’s in.’ Talk of what happened to his wife was clearly the only story in town for the staff.

Narey told her she was and the girl led her to Cairns’ inner office.

Douglas Cairns didn’t seem exactly overjoyed to see her but was polite nevertheless. Dressed in a black suit with a black T-shirt underneath, he rose from his black-leather sofa like a man escaping from a tunnel and asked if he could have anything brought for her.

‘A glass of water, please.’

‘Still or sparkling?’