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.
I got to sleep eventually.
I dreamt of Uncle Rory coming home, driving the old Rover Verity had been born in, the window open, his arm sticking out, him smiling and holding the missing folder in his hand; waving it. In the dream, he had a funny looking white towel wrapped round his neck, and that was when I woke up and remembered.
My white silk scarf; the irreplaceable Möbius scarf, the gift of Darren Watt, had been in the missing bag as well.
‘Noooo!’ I wailed into the pillow.
Waking up was a process of gradually remembering all the things I had to feel bad about. I rang Lost Property first thing. No bag. I got them to give me the number for the cleaners’ mess-room and asked there. No bag. I tried Gallanach, in case the train had got back there before the bag had been discovered under the seat by some honest person. No bag.
I tried both stations again in the afternoon; guess what?
I did the only thing I could think of, and retired to bed; if 1 was to be a blade of grass doomed to be trampled flat, then I might as well accept it and lie down. I stayed in bed for the next twenty-four hours, sleeping, drinking a little water, not eating at all, and only rousing myself when Gav arrived back (from his parents’, I wrongly assumed), loudly declaring himself to be of unsound liver but totally in love.
Oh, lucky ewe, I said, does she come from a respectable flock?
Ha ha, it’s your au - fr ... parents’ friend, Janice, Gav beamed, radiating unrepentant guilt; came round here the other day looking for you we got talking went for a curry had a few drinks ended up back here one thing led to another know how it is always liked older women they’re more experienced know what I mean arf arf anyway spent an extremely enjoyable New Year at her place apart from the usual visit to my folks’ of course oh by the way she’s coming round here tonight I’m cooking lasagne can you swap rooms seeing Norris won’t be back until tomorrow it’s just I didn’t expect you back until then either, that okay?
I stared at Gav from my bed, blinking and trying to take in this torrent of exponentially catastrophic information. I attempted desperately to convince myself that what I was experiencing was just a particularly cruel and hateful dream concocted by some part of my mind determined to exact