As well as Eleanor, there was, of course, Geraldine, who physically couldn't even join in most of the games, at least not with enough effectiveness as to make it worthwhile. Lots of the girls were friends with Geraldine, but she was still on the end of a lot of slagging and therefore relegated to this social subset that Joanne was always looking to add to. It didn't take much. Helen was an attempted target, her pure slagging being that she once called the teacher Mummy back in Primary Four. In Karen's case, as well as mistakenly identifying herself as Helen on her first day, she had, of course, peed herself when she got overexcited at Zoe bursting her milk. Fortunately, as the years passed, fewer and fewer children saw any profit in raking it up again. Karen got the impression Joanne was disappointed that the incident hadn't had a permanently blemishing effect, as though she believed it should have been widely regarded as forever putting her on a par with Eleanor, wet pants for life.

Now it was Zoe she thought could be eternally disgraced by the shame of a boy claiming to have seen her private parts.

"I never showed him anything," Zoe protests.

"That's no what we heard. You were stayin at his hoose and you pulled up your nightie an every thin."

"Get tae France."

"Come on," appeals Alison, everyone having already seen this picture a few times. "It's your turn to hold, Joanne."

Zoe turns around to resume bouncing her balls, advised by her friends to 'just ignore her'. Joanne, still visibly fuming, takes hold of the chain from Michelle.

Michelle starts from hipsies and makes it as far as nosies before failing at head height. This is an unusual setback, but may have something to do with Joanne holding her end almost at full stretch above-rather than on top of-her head. Michelle rolls her eyes at Karen as she steps aside, aware of what happened, but she doesn't say anything. She knows she'll get another turn when Joanne's not holding, so it's not worth making a fuss. It pays off, too, as Joanne simply gets on with it for a while and restricts her remarks to complimenting Alison on having the best technique.

Karen expects Joanne to repeat her antics when she is making her own bid at head height, but she keeps the rope where it's supposed to be. Karen hitches her skirt up a wee bit to allow her legs the maximum stretch, but she doesn't make the jump. Joanne's eyes are bulging and she looks like she's bursting to contain her glee as she observes Karen's failed attempt. However, to Karen's surprise, she says, "Hard luck," and even offers to stay holding and give up her own shot so that Karen can try again. She can be nice when she tries, though it probably helps that right now she sees it as the best way of keeping in with Alison.

Karen gives it another go. She can sometimes do head height, sometimes not, but she was really close with that last attempt. She bounces on the spot instead of a runny and swings her right leg up as high as she can. She can tell she's made it because she feels the elastic tug on the right side of her ankle. But just as she's twisting her hips to complete the jump, she feels the chain shoot up between her legs and sees Joanne yanking it as high and as hard as she can. It's not sore and it doesn't trip her over or anything, but it pulls her skirt up like happened to Joanne, and exposes her knickers. Knickers that Joanne must have caught a glimpse of before, hence her eye-popping, hence her generous offer, and hence her wheeching the rope up her skirt.

"Ah-ha-ha. Check the colour of Karen's pants. They're all bluey. They've been washed wrang. Ah-ha. Bluey pants. That's a pure slaggin. Karen's mammy doesnae wash her pants right. That's a pure slaggin. Imagine wearin pants that havenae been washed right. Probably means they're smelly as well. Poo-ee."

"Right, you're not playing this game any more," decides Michelle, even though it's Helen's game. "Go on, get. You're bein horrible to Karen. Away and play with somebody else."

Joanne doesn't contest this, nor is she likely to see it as any great loss, as she's not getting Alison to herself anyway. She stomps away in search of, Karen is sure, a more receptive audience for this monumental piece of news.

"Just ignore her," Michelle says, echoing the advice Zoe received a few minutes ago.

Karen nods and says she will, but she can't get Joanne's look of triumph out of her head, can't shake the fear that this time she's got something she can really work with. Anything that gets your underwear on to the playground agenda is potentially damaging, but add the issue of cleanliness and, well...Truth was you didn't add the issue of cleanliness in these things-you multiplied by it. And while it didn't have any impact on Karen's standing with Helen, Michelle or even the coveted Alison, it wasn't Karen's friends that Joanne was hoping to influence.

Sparring It's last night. He's in the Railway Inn to meet Scot, to catch up; on each other and in Martin's case on twenty years of Noodsy. The Railway was Scotty's call. Martin is checked into the Sheraton in Glasgow and would have preferred to meet somewhere in town. Scot was working in Paisley, however, and anyway still lives in Braeside, though not exactly in his old neighbourhood. Not in the 'new hooses', either, but in one of the big Victorian places right up on the brae itself, bordering farmland. The Haunted Mansions, they used to call them when they were weans, because few dwellings in the town predated the Second World War, and not even the private modern houses had any such imposing stature. Martin is kind of curious to see round the place, but figures he might have some making up, never mind catching up, to do before Scotty is likely to extend an invite. He is curious to see Helen, too. He missed the wedding because he was on holiday in Australia at the time, and that was fifteen years ago. He's never seen the kids, the oldest of whom must be-Jesus-thirteen.

He actually thought Scot's choice of the Railway might be part of his penance for the other night. Martin has only ever been in it a couple of times before, having left town by the time he was old enough to go drinking. Indeed, being of a legal age to drink would have made him a comparative coffin-dodger among the Railway's contemporary clientele. It was the place everybody boasted about getting served in when he was at St Grace's; basically a school disco with a licence. Staff must have been under orders not to bother about ID and the polis must have been on back-handers. It was a garish kaleidoscope of metallic colours inside, the surfaces thus presumably easier to mop clean of blood and sick. Wall-to-wall with blootered underage neds and blootered underdressed lassies, clutching glasses of Pernod and blackcurrant as they danced under a glit-terball to the latest Stock, Aitken and Waterman prole music. There was a special shuttle service to Paisley at closing time, straight to the Royal Alexandra, blue light all the way.

From where he's sitting now, it's hard to believe it's the same place. Brass pumps stand proudly along the lacquered hardwood bar. The floorboards are stripped and polished, broad beams once hidden beneath floor tiles and lino, and thus protected from the indignities of a thousand teenage spews and as many burst noses. The vinyl-upholstered benches are gone, high stools hugging shallow wooden shelves around the walls, framed black-and-whites of Braeside past hung a few feet above the pints and ashtrays. Not only is it difficult to imagine how the same room used to look; it's hard to imagine it ever looked different from this in the century since the inn first opened for business.

He normally drinks bottles of Dos Equis or, at the scruffiest, Becks when he's out in London, but he orders a pint of Eighty Shilling because it seems appropriate. It goes down quickly, partly because it's good and he's well ready for it under the circumstances, and partly because he's on his own and there's nothing else to do. He's about finished it when his mobile rings. It's Scotty, to say, redundantly, that he's running late at work. Martin finishes the pint and is about to get up for a refill when one is placed down on the table in front of him, along with a glass of red wine.

"This one is on the house," says their bearer. "We don't often have somebody famous in the place, so I thought we should make the most of it."

She pulls up a chair and sits down next to him. He'd been served by someone else, a bloke, and had only caught a side-on glimpse of her at the bar. He'd noted the skirt suit with some approval, though it was an approval he tended to accord to any woman who had managed to reach her mid-thirties without doubling the size of her arse; and within that there was an equally broad subset of those dressing at all more stylish than a char-woman going on-shift. Kara wasn't wrong about him fucking anyone with a hint of fame and glamour; she'd just overestimated how much glamour was required to meet his minimum.

She seems familiar, and is clearly very sure of his identity, but he can't place her. She's got long, straightened black hair, dyed but stylishly so, framing a face that he considers passably attractive but which nonetheless is pricking a more repellent instinctive response. She's bringing him a drink, she's smiling and he's already cursorily given her the thumbs-up on his personal, semiconscious 'would you?' test. Yet something is telling him to be wary. Something is telling him he doesn't like her.

"Have you forgotten who I am, Martin?" she asks, enjoying her advantage. "Or do you know fine and you're blankin me?"

"A bit of both," he says, poker-faced, his unease making him reluctant to turn on even the auto-charm. "I can't quite place you. It's been a long time."

"Tell you what, I'll take it as a compliment." She's smiling still, but it's not entirely warm, and nor is she in a hurry to give up what she's dangling over him.

He thinks of a cat playing with its prey. Then it hits him. "Jojo," he says.

She nods slowly, looking very pleased with herself, as well she might. No wonder he couldn't place her. She slimmed down a bit in her teens, but he'd have expected her to blow up again later in life. Back when she was Queen B (for bitch) of the trendy crowd, he used to picture her a few years down the line with a couple of chubby kids at her feet, an arse wider than her garage and tits bouncing off her knees. She's not skinny; she doesn't have that emaciated over-compensatory look of the obsessive slimming zealot. Instead, she's just well proportioned, allied to a confidence about her movement and poise suggesting her more streamlined shape isn't something she has recently acquired. He remembers somebody saying she had the kind of face that would be pretty if she lost weight, but at the time he never bought it because he couldn't divorce the face from the person. Now, he'd have to admit they had a point. There's still a cruelty to her visage, however. Okay, maybe that's too harsh, but an archness, at least, suggesting even if she wasn't cruel, she wouldn't be particularly merciful, either.

"You're looking...different," he says, about as much of a compliment as he can bring himself to deliver.

"Not the same you, either, is it? Look at this suit. Clocked the shoes, too. Quite the metropolitan these days, aren't you? Of course, I suppose you always have to be at your best in case there's a photographer about to jump oot and snap ye."

Christ. "Yeah. I also do a bit of legal work," he says tiredly. "Yourself?"

"Well, sorry to disappoint. I know you'd love to hear I'm a career barmaid, but I own the pub."

"Why would that disappoint me? What, are you still calling me a snob because I'm a brainy kid fae the bought hooses?"

"Oh, come on," she says, stalling the wineglass halfway to her mouth. "You tellin me you never have a wee smug thought to yourself about how much better you've done than all the folk who gave you a hard time?"

"Cannae say it's prominent in my mind when I'm locked in contract negotiations, no. That's such a small-town way of thinking."

"Aye, I suppose. You couldnae wait to get oot the place, leave all us nobodies behind."

"When did I ever say...You know, Jojo, the irony is, I always got called a snob, when I never actually did or said anything snobbish. You were the one who looked down on me. You made simplistic assumptions, thought there was nothing more to me than being the brainy kid."

"And you assumed because you were brainy that everybody else was thick."

"I never looked down on anybody, Jojo."

"Perhaps not when you were at St Lizzie's, Martin, but you did later on. By God, you did. You were just too right-on to admit it to yourself..."

"Christ, free drinks and psychoanalysis. Service in this place is fantastic, though I'll maybe just take a poke of crisps with my next pint." He looks at his watch, cursing Scot for his choice of venue and doubly so for the bastard still not being here.

"You here to meet Scot? Cursin him tae, I bet."

"How do you-"

"Naebody else you could be meetin. I know why you're here as well. "

"Bad news travels fast."

"Aye." She nods. "Nae surprise that Johnny Turner got himself murdered. More a shock aboot Colin."

"Nae surprise aboot Robbie either, I guess. More a shock aboot Noodsy."

"Mmm," she says, but she doesn't look so sure. "I'll tell you this: if that Karen Gillespie wants to know a thing or two aboot this toon, she should ask me. Cannae see it happenin, though, can you?"

"You two were never exactly a mutual appreciation society. I don't remember the details, I stayed well clear and took no sides."

"No sides, naw, but I bet you wish it was her instead of me sittin here the noo." She grins, lapping up his discomfort.

"So what should she be asking you about?" he says, just the first thing he can think of to head off where she's taking this.

"Anything. I'm a big Nosy Parker that runs a pub."

He laughs politely. "I think what you've done with the place is amazing, by the way."

"Aye, I'm very proud of it. Not in the same league as the swanky places you and your celeb mates hang out in doon in London, but it'll do us small-town thinkers."

And that's how it goes on. They sip their drinks and spar. There are polite smiles on their faces but neither of them says anything that isn't laced with bitterness. Every statement is guarded, barbed, conceding no territory in a retrospective battle for the moral high ground. But it's compelling too, a contest neither wants to lose or abandon.

Martin doesn't know how long has passed when his mobile rings again: this conversation could have been ten minutes that felt like an hour or vice versa. It's Scotty again. Whatever's up at work is no nearer resolution. He apologises, says they'll meet tomorrow, which is Saturday, after all.

Jojo needs to hear only one side of the call to know the situation. She's looking at him when he hangs up. "So," she says. "You for the off, or can I get you another?"

Violence Karen considers it testimony to how highly Joanne values her new pure-slaggin material that she has relinquished first place in the line-even without competition today from Carol and Michelle-in order to spend more time spreading the big news. Her comparatively late arrival also affords her a spot in the queue better positioned to broadcast it further, as up front would have presented a buffer of unsympathetic parties between her and fresh ears.

She doesn't get a unanimous response, as plenty of the girls are doubtless also the shame-faced owners of twin-tub casualties and either uneasy or simply unconvinced about its stig-matic status. But there are still enough who are happy to latch on to it for the sake of their favourite bloodsport. Predictably, the most squealingly delighted is Geraldine. These days she has to endure far less taunting herself, since the discovery that her bulk could be a source of intimidation as much as ridicule, but she still knows how she is generally regarded and is therefore seldom slow to embrace anything that makes somebody else the target.

Thus encouraged, Joanne is going for the ultimate test of a slagging's substance by attempting to transmit it across the great divide into the boys' line. This is an undertaking with a very low success rate, given that these are two cultures trading in entirely separate currencies, but she evidently reckons it's well worth the risk of failure for the potential pay-off.

"Have yous heard?" she asks, having finally grabbed some of the boys' attention. "Karen's pants arenae washed right. She's wearin mingin pants, bad as Eleanor. Mibbe it's actually been Karen that smells all along and we've been blamin Eleanor by mistake."

Karen wants to ignore it, let them assume it's just the latest dribblings from Joanne's incessant gub, but she senses the danger. The Eleanor comparisons are damaging enough, but putting doubt in folks' heads as to who the source of the smells is could have long-term consequences.

"She's talkin mince," Karen says, trying not to sound too angry, because it's unwise to let your classmates sense your burtons have been pushed. "They just got a bit dyed cause they were in the twin-tub with a blue T-shirt."

"See?" Joanne responds triumphantly. "She's even admittin herself her knickers arenae washed properly."

"They're washed fine. They just-"

"Ah-haaa. Cannae be washed fine, you just said so yoursel."

In the main, the boys' eye-rolling indifference is the standard indicator that the news hasn't made the leap. Only one of them appears to be interested, though worryingly it is Scot Connolly, who has what Karen's gran would call 'a wicked tongue in his heid'. "So Karen's knickers went funny cause they went in the wash with somethin else?" he asks Joanne, smiling and glancing along the line at Karen, too. She feels a lump in her stomach. "Well, at least naebody can say that aboot you, eh?" he adds.

"Too right," she affirms with a smug nod.

"Naw. Cause your mammy can only fit your knickers in the machine wan at a time."

Karen now has a new hero. This decisively ends Joanne's foray across the void and serves as a warning shot to Geraldine, too. Karen offers Scot a smile by way of thanks, but he has already turned away to lap up the laughter of his mates.

Joanne's response to this rebuff, however, is simply a renewed effort to consolidate her successes on the girls' side. This one is too good to be allowed to slip away, and she looks fiercely determined-desperate, even-to capitalise fully. Everybody has heard Scot's remark, which threatens to shift the focus, so she needs to act quickly, and she does. With the teachers still not back to take in the lines, she skips a few places along the queue and touches Eleanor on the shoulder. "Bugsy touch!" she whispers as she skips away, waving her right hand in the air.

Bugsy touch is kind of like tig, where you have to touch somebody else to get rid of it, but whereas tig is just a harmless game, there is something nasty about bugsy touch, because it's supposed to be Eleanor's bugs that you've got. The spiteful element of it doesn't stop there, either. Unlike tig, it tends not to take place in the wider range of the playground, but during the lines, where there is limited scope for movement, and with the added suspense that the teachers may appear at any second, at which point everyone must stand still, leaving someone with the bugs. That person then gets treated by the others as if they were truly smelly, and it's an excuse to come out with things even the worst of them wouldn't say directly to Eleanor, though she is likely to be in earshot.

Joanne knows well that Karen is one of the girls who won't join in. This sometimes leaves Karen with the bugsy touch because she refuses to pass it on, but other times someone else will touch her in order to get the game going again among those who want to be involved. There is a cluster of such refuseniks towards the front of the line, causing the game to restrict itself to Joanne's immediate vicinity and greatly reducing the chances that it will be Karen who ends up tainted. However, the very fact that Joanne does not seem frustrated by this is what really has Karen worried, something not eased by Joanne contriving to end up with the bugs when the teachers appear.

It's Mrs Cook and Mrs Henderson, who teach the Primary Fours. The Fives will therefore get sent in first, as the teachers will send their own classes in last and accompany them to their respective rooms. This means that there is no adult escort as they make their way inside and up the stairs to Miss O'Connor's class. Consequently, Karen is able to continue chatting to Helen and Michelle, and has forgotten about the threat from Joanne by the time she reaches the classroom, already turning her worries to whether she'll remember her Catechism answers that she tried to memorise last night.

The Catechism is a wee green book full of things that are like prayers, in that they are all about God and Jesus and all that, except they come in the form of questions and answers, whereas prayers are a bit more like poems. Miss O'Connor assigns them three or four Catechism answers a week, to be tested on Thursday afternoon. The problem with this is that if you memorise them too early in the week, you can have forgotten them by Thursday, and if you leave it until later, you can forget to do it altogether. This has happened to Karen a couple of times, and it is an utterly horrible sensation when you realise as you walk in after lunchtime; but sometimes even though she has learnt the answers, she forgets bits when it comes to reciting them, because Miss O'Connor is quite scary and makes her nervous. Miss O'Connor asks at random, so you can be lucky and get asked after a few other people, which refreshes your memory. But if you get the answers wrong, you have to copy them all out ten times for the next day. This itself is not a particularly arduous sanction, but the tongue-lashing that comes with it is far worse. What's on Karen's mind as she approaches their class is that Miss O'Connor has been in a horrible mood all day, and that's without anybody doing anything to make her angry.

Karen is rehearsing her answers in her head when Joanne suddenly appears at her side, taps her on the shoulder and declares: "Eeeew! That's Karen got Eleanor's smelly bugs and her own. Double bugsy touch! Eeeew!"

Karen goes to her desk, trying to shrug it off, but some of the girls filing past are holding their noses or doing wafting gestures in front of their faces. She glances at Joanne as she sits down two rows along, and sees her grimace like she's about to be sick, though all the while her eyes are indicating how much she's loving it.

Karen feels this exasperated rage thrill through her. It's not a hurt, not a recoil from being singled out, but an offended certainty that she just shouldn't have to be putting up with this. She can hear Helen once again advise that she 'just ignore her', but while she finds Joanne's antics pathetic, she really grudges her the pleasure she's taking, and wants very much to stop it. She looks to the open door and listens carefully above the low-level chatter of the class taking their seats, searching for the sound of Miss O'Connor's approach. You can always hear her coming because she wears these high heels that go clack-clack against the stairs as she comes up them. Karen hears no such sound, so there is time to act. She doesn't want to lower herself to the level of the bugsy touch game, but equally she doesn't want Joanne to have the satisfaction of sitting there mugging at her all afternoon.

Karen gets up and runs not to Joanne, but to Geraldine, who has just squeezed herself into the otherwise ample space between her desk and the connected bench. She brushes the top of Geraldine's head and then makes her way quickly to Joanne.

"Well, if I've got the double bugsy touch," she says, "you can have the double tubby touch," and slaps her on the upper arm.

Joanne grabs where Karen has just hit her and cowers her head into her chest, shrieking and moaning in a manner massively disproportionate to the force Karen used. It seems a ridiculous-even potentially embarrassing-reaction, until a voice sounds shrilly behind Karen and turns her insides to ice: "Karen Gillespie! Get away from there and go to my desk, at oncel"

Karen turns to see Miss O'Connor standing just outside in the corridor, next to the other Primary Five teacher Mrs Robertson, from whose class she has apparently just emerged.

Karen barely breathes as she makes her way to the desk. Miss O'Connor closes the door with a room-silencing slam and then redundantly calls the class to order. Then she walks slowly to her desk and sits down, waiting a few seconds before looking at Karen, who can feel herself physically trembling.

"I won't tolerate violence in my classroom," she says. "Go directly to Mrs Harris and tell her I need to borrow her belt."

It takes ages for Karen to return. Feels like ages to Martin, anyway, and must feel much longer for Karen. They're doing the Catechism Inquisition, as Scotty calls it. O'Connor makes out she picks folk in random order, but Martin knows that's pish. He never gets picked until near the end because he never forgets to learn the answers, and the more folk who come out with the right responses early on, the easier it is for those who are called later to pick them up. This just proves she's more interested in catching folk out than in them learning the Catechism, because otherwise what would it matter if a few kids picked up the answers from hearing their classmates? The end result would still be that they knew their stuff.

Everybody hates O'Connor. Folk think you must like the teacher if you're clever or if you never get into trouble, but they're wrong. Martin thinks it's the other way round: that he hates her more than most because he's giving his best and still gets met with a sour-faced scowl from a woman who seems to be in an eternal bad mood. It's not because she's strict; Clarke was strict, and he didn't hate her. Teachers ought to be strict if they're doing their job properly (Mrs Ford is known as a push-over, and any time Martin's seen her class when on an errand, it has looked pure murder). But O'Connor's nasty streak belongs more among the weans than the staff.

Sending Karen to fetch the belt herself, for instance. That's just sick. And she always does it, too, though it wouldn't surprise him if she had her own belt and sent folk anyway. Scotty got it a few weeks back. He said going to Harris's office and bringing it back was far worse than the belting itself. This was something she was undoubtedly aware of, seeing as she went on enough about the Romans' cruelty in making Jesus carry his own cross.

Well seeing O'Connor never asked Joanne if she was all right. She knew fine Joanne was acting it, but O'Connor's been in a horrible mood-even by her standards-all day, and was just looking for someone to take it out on.

It's a disgrace. If anybody deserves the belt, never mind a wee slap on the arm, it's that cow Joanne, and he's not just saying that because she's nasty to him and calls him Professor Brainbox. Martin knows you're not supposed to be cruel about people's appearances, but he can't help thinking Fat Joanne has never looked so ugly as she does right then when Karen finally walks back in carrying the belt. Her face is a truly unflattering mixture of delight, satisfaction and cruelly eager anticipation.

Poor Karen. You can tell she's suffering and has spent all of her gloomy errand trying with all her might not to cry. She's not blubbing, but her eyes are moist and Martin can see streaks on her cheeks. He hasn't really paid her any particular attention before. The boys don't talk much to the girls, so you usually notice only the ones that for whatever reason stand out or make themselves the centre of attention. Karen isn't super-brainy, like Helen, or thick like Margaret-Mary. Nor is she dead pretty, like Michelle, or pure horrible like Eleanor. But standing there, helpless as she hands over the instrument of her imminent punishment, she's suddenly got Martin feeling all funny inside and wishing he could come to her rescue. He's daydreaming there's some way he could lie to take the blame, and all that would come with it. Wouldn't that be amazing? And then she'd want to kiss him.

There is a reverent hush as Karen is directed to a spot in front of the blackboard and reluctantly puts up her hands, but Colin suspects he's not the only one who is secretly delighted, as he is any time O'Connor decides somebody is for the belt. You feel a bit guilty when it's one of your pals, but it's still an exciting spectacle. The teachers like it, too. Otherwise they would do it out in the corridor, wouldn't they, like he's heard one teacher does at Braeside Primary. Like it? Love it. That's why they make the whole thing into an exhibition, with O'Connor even giving it the maximum build-up by sending the victim to Harris for the hardware.

This is the first time it's ever been a girl, though, and it's making him feel a little weird. Good weird, though. O'Connor is the worst teacher they've ever had, and everybody hates her, but there's something about those long black boots she wears that makes him think of the ladies in pantomimes. She's got long black hair, too, like the Wicked Queen in Snow White.

Seeing O'Connor-or any of the women teachers-using the belt gives him a feeling he never gets when it's Momo (even though he is the scariest and hits the hardest), and now the prospect of O'Connor giving it to a girl seems to be multiplying whatever it is.

He feels a tightening between his legs and realises he has a stauner.

Robbie hopes she greets. He loves seeing folk get the belt; loves it more when it's someone who's never had it before. He'd fucking love to see a fucking snob like Helen get it. She'd greet, definitely. Or Martin. He'd greet as well. Or Colin. Robbie battered him in Primary Three. Poof. Fucking snobs.

O'Connor brings it down. Hear the swish, hear the crack. Robbie's been told it used to be fours and sixes, and sometimes they'd insist it was the same hand. That would be fuckin yes. Just when they're in pure agony, they've got to stick their mitt back up for some more, until it's red-fucking raw. But the most you ever see now is two, and usually on different hands. Karen's getting two. Clarke only ever gave one, but O'Connor always gives two. She hasn't cried at the first one, but O'Connor's making her wait a wee minute between strokes, giving her time to think about the next one coming, and that might set her off. He really hopes she greets. Come on, greet.

Crack, it comes down again.

Karen doesn't greet, though. Her eyes are all filled up and her throat's pure swollen, but she keeps her face straight as she walks back to her seat.

Then she greets.