She breathes in the hairspray topnotes of a highland single malt, which needs a glass not a tooth mug. Her lips sting. They have opened and closed all day. Here’s to a taste of being happy after the gentle pain of closure – the pang of goodbye to the St. Andrews’ teacher who’d holidayed in her home town, to the Welsh poet she hopes to meet again, goodbye to the rather famous, and to the Iraqi poet with wheat-beer breath who kissed her on both cheeks.

The sting repeats with the second mugful while the Gaelic band plays elsewhere. The moon’s larger than she’s ever known. She’s tired of smiling, wants her lips

to burn to silence, her ears to rest from adjusting to accents, her eyes to start seeing double. She senses her before she sees her, glimpsed in the mirror, opposite the bed, past the flowers – a woman, not a poet – just a woman drinking alone. She doesn’t like to judge but that whisky’s half her age.