'Jeez,' said Calum, when he saw what it was. Gabrielle shot me a look of anger and disappointment. They turned the structure over and pulled it about as I explained why and how I'd compiled it.

'And that's not the worst of it,' I said.

'Not the worst?' Gabrielle asked, sounding shocked.

I drained the mug. By now the coffee was lukewarm. 'No,' I said. 'There's more.'

I then told them how I'd taken it to Baxter, and why, and what had happened a including about the spooks' visit, and the aftermath.

'Jesus, Sinky,' said Calum, 'You are a bit of a shit.'

'I know,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'

'No, really,' said Gabrielle, voice shaking, her face white to the lips, 'this is the most spiteful, vindictive, stupid thing you could have done. Didn't you even think? What if Baxter really had been a fascist? Did you not think about that? Or did you? Did the thought of me and mine getting identified and investigated and maybe even persecuted give you a little smirk of quiet satisfaction?'

'No!' I said. That was exactly what it had given me; even though I hadn't taken the possibility seriously I'd entertained the fantasy. The guilty memory added heat to my denial. 'No, nothing like that! I knew it wouldn't come to anything like that. I knew Baxter would treat it as a provocation, that was the whole point. I knew he'd be suspicious of it.'

'Oh, you knew, did you?'

'Yes, and anyway this is all public, it's all on the databases, and you said yourself about the speciation thing being known-'

'Oh, fuck you, Ryan, grow up. It may be out there but it takes a a an evil ideology or an evil mind to pull it all together like that.'

'I don't have any ideology,' I said. I raised both hands, and half a smile. 'An evil mind, OK, I'll admit to that.'

'It's no fucking joke, Sinky,' said Calum. 'I mean apart fae whit Gabrielle's saying, there's yir other disturbing wee admission that what yi were really trying tae dae wis finger me and Sophie as revolutionaries, for fuck's sake.'

'And myself as well,' I pointed out.

'Aye, but you're aw right,' said Calum, leaning forward and shaking his finger at me. 'You ken fine yir no a revolutionary. The fucking spooks could rake through yir entire fucking life and no find a scrap ae evidence against yi.'

'Well, they could,' I said, still trying to be reasonable, trying to make light of it. 'I still have a copy or two and a zip drive of What Now? somewhere.'

'Aye, and so has every cunt that ever had a spark ae curiosity or rebellion back in their teens. They'd be mair suspicious if yi didnae! The point is, Sinky, you only know for sure about yirself. You don't know for sure about me and Sophie.'

'Oh, come on!' I cried. 'This is ridiculous. I know you all right a you and me were practically fascists ourselves when we were at school, hoping for a military coup and all that, and to this day you bang on about how we're living under socialism already a just like Baxter does, come to think of it. And as for Sophie, OK I don't know her so well, but she's no revolutionary. She makes cloth for frocks, for fuck's sake! I've never heard a political word out of her.'

This was not strictly true, I realised as I said it, remembering her alarming reflections about the ethics of taking the long view. But that was too abstract a consideration to count.

'Disnae matter,' said Calum. 'It was no your call tae make.'

I'd come here to confess and to apologise, but I'd thought of it more in the nature of clearing up a misunderstanding. Only now did the enormity of what I'd done come home to me. McCormick had been right about me. I really was a piece of work.

I found myself sitting with my head in my hands. I didn't know how long for. I sat up straight and looked at Calum and Gabrielle, that perfect Neanderthal couple, at this moment almost literally joined at the hip, who regarded me from across the room with silent scorn.

'I've done you wrong,' I said. 'You and a lot of other people. I'm sorry.'

Gabrielle and Calum looked at each other, and each, almost imperceptibly to me, nodded. Then they faced me again.

'Good,' said Gabrielle. 'Now, what are you going to do to put it right? You've convinced Baxter that it was all nonsense, you've come and told us everything, and I guess you're going to tell Sophie.'

'Yes,' I said. 'That was the plan.'

'It's not enough. You have to keep an eye on Baxter and his lot from now on, and you have to convince us you're never going to pull a stunt like this again.'

I felt relieved that this was all she demanded.

'Oh!' I cried. 'I know how I can keep an eye on Baxter. I can take him up on his offer of a job.'

Gabrielle smiled thinly. 'Getting a proper job would do you good, as I used to tell you over and over. But how can you convince us you'll be loyal to your friends?'

So we were still friends. That was something.

'I don't know,' I said. 'I don't have any hostages to offer you. I could swear, if that would help.'

'You swore tae me once,' said Calum. 'By God and Darwin, I seem tae recall. Didnae make any difference, did it?'

'It did!' I protested. 'I never said a word about the book to anyone. That's what you swore me to silence about. The book you told me about and that you faked the evidence for and that didn't exist anyway.'

'The book wisnae the main point,' said Calum. 'But OK, I'll gie you that. And Gabrielle got you thinking about the family secret and made out it was no secret and no big deal apart fae the, uh, the personal aspect ae it. So I'll let yi off on a technicality. But this time, I just want you tae swear tae stay loyal tae yir friends, like Gabrielle said.'

'Of course,' I said. 'I'll swear.' Giddy with relief, I essayed a smile. 'What do you want me to swear on this time?'

Calum slid off the side of the armchair, stalked over to the bookshelf niche, pulled down a book and gave it to me, from both of his hands to both of mine. It was bound in ancient, furred leather with faint remnants of gold tooling, and lay heavy in my hands and across my knees. I opened it, and saw within the striking, surprising white of vellum; turned over the leaves, and saw the incomprehensible words in an unfamiliar alphabet, and the text divided in the easily recognisable form of gospel and epistle, chapter and verse; and the weird, crabbed, violent illustrations throughout. I turned to the last book, and its ninth chapter, and saw the locust picture.

I closed it, hands shaking, and looked up at Calum.

'You can swear on this,' he said.

PART EIGHT.

28.

The big frocks blazed in jewel shades in the window panel on the front of the Fabrications office in Hope Street. The illusion of an old-fashioned formal dress shop window was perfect until one of the mannequins morphed to a model with a catwalk scowl and twirl, or a gown changed shape and colour more radically than even metafabric garments actually could. I watched several cycles of such transformations before I nerved myself to go in. Behind the door, it was a normal front office, apart from the wall pictures, which were more of the same, and the receptionist likewise. The juxtaposition was bizarre. She looked as if she'd stepped from a Winterhalter or Sargent painting into a 1970s office-furniture ad, to park her bustle on a swivel chair behind a compressed-pine desk.

I'd originally intended to visit Sophie the following week, but Calum and Gabrielle had pointed out that she often worked on Saturdays, and insisted I go straight to her workplace from their flat. Perhaps they suspected that my resolve would falter with delay, or that I'd come up with some scheme to evade the issue and mitigate the confrontation.

'Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?'

'Ah, is Sophie Watt in today?'

The receptionist eyed me. 'Do you have an appointment?'

'No, I'm an old school friend. I just dropped by on impulse.'

'I'll see.'

She rang and spoke, listened, nodded.

'Second floor,' she told me. 'Third door on the left.'

I smiled, thanked her, and trudged up the four flights of stairs. The third door opened silently to a big studio space. Bolts and swatches of fabric lay on long tables, weighted by scissors and metal rulers, alongside complex bits of laboratory apparatus and synthetic biology tanks and tubes. Prototyping machines and 3D printers jostled for space with industrial-grade overlockers and sewing machines. In one corner stood a small tent, and overhead hung what looked like the wing of a man-sized bat. Sophie stood in front of a big tilted screen, light-pen in hand, caught in thought. She was wearing narrow jeans, long boots, and a protective smock spattered with varicoloured splotches of plastic and paint like a kindergarten child's art-class tabard.

She must have heard my step, or seen a shadow flicker. She turned from her work and smiled.

'Oh, hi, Ryan! Good to see you.'

She threaded her way through the clutter, and indicated two stools by one of the long tables.

'Have a seat, watch your step.'

'Thanks. And thanks for making time to see me. Hope I'm not interrupting anything.'

'Only the most totally brilliant idea for a new fabric that I've ever had.' She put the heel of her hand to her forehead. 'Then the phone rang. It's gone now.'

'Oh, Christ, sorry about-'

She laughed at the look on my face. 'Honestly, Ryan! Of course not. I'm just dealing with stuff I should have got done during the week. Come to think of it, that really is your fault. We were all agog about the Rammie business. Thank goodness it wasn't our material that was the problem. Nice bit of investigation you did there! I saw you mentioned on the telly.'

'Oh, yeah, well, I got a leak from inside BAS. Just luck in a way.' I stopped myself from spinning yet another lie as if I'd already forgotten why I was there and what I'd so recently sworn to do. 'Actually, no, it wasn't. That's ... kind of why I'm here. I've got something to tell you.'

'Really? Go on.'

She raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes, as if expecting some delightful surprise. I was still rattled, still shaking inside from the response I'd got from Calum and Gabrielle: a response I should have expected, and would have if I'd applied the smallest gumption to forethought. A minute's thought would have set me right; but, as someone once said, thinking is painful and a minute is a long time. Was I now about to stray into another minefield, having expected nothing more than a patch of rough ground?

'Well, it's kind of a long story,' I said, floundering, 'and it concerns you because ... well, a few weeks ago I sort of suddenly realised or at least thought I did that, well, when I looked back it was all about you, that it's always been about you, and-'

She slipped off her stool and flung her arms around me, damn near knocking me off my seat.

'Oh, Ryan! That's so sweet!'

Her misunderstanding was so unexpected, so perfect, and so welcome that I was tempted then and there to say nothing more, or at least to delay telling her the truth. I returned her hug, and then put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away.

'Yes, Sophie,' I said. 'There's that, yes. But there's a lot more, and you really have to hear it, and maybe when you've heard it all you won't even like me.'

She stepped back and sat up again, with a frown that was more puzzled than angry or wary.

'Try me,' she said.

And oh, how I tried her. I held nothing back. Well, almost nothing. After what I'd learned about myself in my conversation with Calum and Gabrielle I was in no shape to repeat the various evasions that had smoothed my confession to them. I told her nearly everything, including things I hadn't told any of the others, and things I haven't told you.

It wasn't as one-sided as it sounds. Sophie had plenty of questions and interjections and expressions of disbelief. This took some time. It took the rest of the afternoon and half the evening, and the conversation that began in the studio continued through a long walk, up Hope Street and along Sauchiehall Street, across Kelvingrove Park. It ended at last in the Aragon, an old and oft-renovated pub on Byres Road.

'And that's it,' I finished.

I faced her across a table in an alcove, our small eddy in a swirl and roar of students. Half a shared platter of chips was getting cold on the table between us, reeking of vinegar. I wiped my mouth and fingers with a tattered paper napkin, and took a swallow of Glasgow Pride and a long draw on my pipe.

'That's it?'

'Everything,' I said.

Well, nearly everything. And what I'd left out was nothing that need concern her, anyway.

'Ryan, you are one devious, shifty, thoughtless, heartless, worthless, obsessive, perverted, voyeuristic, neurotic, idiotic, selfish, self-centred, cowardly, pathetic excuse for a human being.'

'That sounds fair,' I said. 'Mind you, I'd have put it a bit more harshly myself.'

'I still like you.'

'You do?'

'I've always known what you're like,' she said. 'But I've always liked you anyway.'

'You did?'

'Yes. Liked you and lusted for you.'

'Damn. I wish I'd known that years ago.'

'When we were both free and single?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, wait,' she said. 'We are both free and single.'

I hadn't thought of myself in that way at all. I had fancied myself still besotted with Gabrielle, nobly sacrificing my passion to her decision, still carrying a torch for her while she went off with Calum and had children with him a the one thing I couldn't do for her. Even when I'd apologised to them that morning for my behaviour and said I knew and accepted that it was all over between me and Gabrielle, I'd been lying my arse off as usual.

I'd still hoped to win her back, somehow. Eventually. When the kids had grown up, or at least were old enough to take the disruption without lasting trauma. Or when she saw through Calum, a fine chap and a good pal but probably not great husband and father material, being far too engrossed in his work, or when ... but there even I have to stop. Some things are just too embarrassing for words.

At that point I did the first really brave and sensible thing I'd done all day, and in many a day. I reached across the table with both hands and clasped Sophie's as they rose to meet mine and said, 'Not now, we're not.'

29.