In Glasgow, the reaction to the Rock 'n' Roll Chef wasn't as rapturous as it had been down south.

Kippy had forgotten all about it, but one of the irregular calls he made to his mother took place the night before the show aired and she asked if he'd be watching it.

"It's a cookery programme," he said. "Why would I want to see that?"

"Everybody here's gonnae be glued tae it. We've invited Marion and Ronnie round and Morag. I think Morag's awfy nervous, tell you the truth. She's worried Mick's gonnae end up looking stupid."

"He already does. Have you seen those pictures?"

But Louisa hadn't. The half-naked posters of Mick, a kitchen knife in one hand, rolling pin in the other, didn't end up plastered on bus shelters in Kirkinwall. There were no double-deckers either where those eyes and mouth made up a dirty grin in giant size for the public to note. No, the publicity campaign confined itself to the south of England and its influence and money. Katrina told him they were all over the tube stations too. Every time she stood on the elevators as they took her up and down London's depths, there he was smirking at the tens of thousands of women who passed him every day.

"And ma gran," he asked. "Will she be watching it?"

Louisa laughed at that and told him Granny Burnett refused the invitation to the communal Mick TV experience. She still called him the daft peacock and warned a TV career would make him ten times worse. No, no. She'd be sitting in the Braemar B&B, thank you very much, keeping hersel' to hersel' and tuning into a nature programme on BBC2. Something with big cats, as she liked those lions.

"Ten pound says she watches it." God knows how he'd prove that bet. Granny Burnett might close her curtains and switch BBC2 to Channel 4. But no way on God's earth would she ever admit it.

"Twenty!" his mother giggled, a light, joyous sound that made him sorry he didn't call her more often. "I'll go to her house when the ads are on and catch her at it!"

As the programme was going out on a Friday, Kippy decided the student union was the best place to watch it. Upstairs, there was a big-screen TV in a lounge area, where people watched sports or televised gigs. Joe behind the bar had a soft spot for him. When he said an old school friend would be on the telly, he held up the remote and flicked channels ignoring the hiss of complaints from everyone else.

Lillian had come along too, hoping she said gleefully, that her half-sister's programme bombed. And if not, they might pick up a tip or two for next year when they were no longer in halls and had to cook for themselves.

He got them both a drink and they settled into one booth close to the TV, its padded seating and broken springs the perfect combination for discomfort. Kippy shook out his packet of Marlborough Light and offered Lillian one. They bent over, heads almost touching to light them from the Zippo Kippy flicked on and he wondered again if Lillian harboured something more than the GBF-stuff she swore was her motivation for hanging out with him all the time.

He dismissed it and concentrated on the TV and the weirdness of seeing someone you'd known forever behind its glass screen. Art school gave him new abilities—to look at a moving picture and appreciate what the camera man, the lighting, the cinematographer and the editor did.

They used a hand-held camera, its unsteadiness adding to the cosy feel of being in someone's home. It zoomed in on bits of Mick—his forearms, the veins there rippling as he chopped onions and carrots at super-fast speed. His back, the movement of his shoulder blades visible through his tee shirt as he pressed on a rolling pin to roll out sheets of home-made pasta, and his eyes as he tasted the sauce he'd created, slowly closing and opening them to stare straight at the camera and say, "That's fucking amazing!"

Whoops. It wasn't yet nine o'clock. Dee must have weighed the risk up in her mind. To leave such a strong swear word in? She changed the way people see TV chefs forever. The soft Scottishness of it—Kippy remembered Mick's accent like his, like Dod's, rough, piercing and sometimes difficult to understand. This was something different. A reinvention for the English, its harshness softened, but still that reminder of hard men, hard flesh—your stereotypical Alpha male.

And the complaints. Kippy imagined the outraged of Tunbridge Wells, or wherever it was where they moaned all the time about modernity and fire off letters to the Daily Mail. Switchboards at TV headquarters jammed full of calls, "That man! He swore! In front of my children!"

No such thing as bad publicity, eh?

The chatter in the room had quietened. No, not everyone in there paid the programme much attention but plenty of faces turned upwards. Art students were a tough crowd too.

When the credits came up, Lillian insisted she wanted to see the end. Maybe she liked her older sister more than she let on as she refused to allow Joe to change channels until she saw the name Dee Marchmont and her company's logo come up. Once it vanished off the top of the screen, she helped herself to another of Kippy's cigarettes without asking, the packet still on the table.

"What a complete arsehole. An utter dickhead wanker."

Loyalty to a childhood friend and the town they both came from made him defensive.

"It wasnae that bad, was it? Made cooking look sexy."

Lillian had sunk back into the seat's padded squishiness. She drew hard on the cigarette.

The Lillian who turned to him didn't resemble the woman he thought he knew. He prided himself on his ability to read eyes. They were the key to the soul and as an artist, you needed to work out what made each pair unique. The product of Anglo-Saxon and Viking genes, Lillian's were blue-green. Most of the time, if asked, he'd have said they told you everything you needed to know about Lillian—happy, sad, excited, despairing, whatever. Now, they shimmied and moved, beliefs changing on an axis. Who was this woman?

"What is sexy?"

Christ. Philosophical questions and him only two drinks down. And the response in his mind? A not-that-good-looking man standing in front of me in cycling shorts, blinking as he takes me in. Not the right answer for Lillian, though. Mick trigged something off here and Kippy owed Lillian a wee bit of support, no matter how ill-equipped he felt.

Lillian stood up. The effort comedic—those broken springs and too-soft padding didn't give up flesh easily—but her struggle forced him to action. He got to his feet ahead of her and offered a hand.

"Come back to my room. D'ye want to talk?"

"Okay. Do you have any hob-nobs?"

Back in his room, he stuck the kettle on and dug out the bottle of whisky. Lillian had spread herself out on his bed. She raised her head when he asked about tea with whisky and nodded. He lit them another couple of cigarettes as they waited for the kettle to boil.

"My granny calls him the daft peacock."

A well-judged comment—Lillian laughed at that. "I need to meet your gran. She sounds too cool for words."

He threw the biscuits at her. The Gods of Fate must have guided him yesterday. He'd picked the chocolate hob-nobs in the supermarket instead of the plain ones, the 15p extra no deterrent. Lillian caught the biscuits and blew him a kiss.

"Milk chocolate too! I'm going to eat so many of them I turn into one."

This time, he told himself not to mind about the crumbs that sprayed everywhere. Friendship, aye? You allowed these things. Premium biscuits and whisky-laced teas—did they stop the spilling of confidences he didn't think he was equipped to handle?

"You'll no' be watching episode two then?" Ach. Time to repay Lillian what she had done for him, no matter that confidence and intimacy made his balls shrivel.

"No." She sat up, propping his pillows against her back, and putting her knees up. "He's too like—

Oh. The about to exchange intimacy conversation. Lassies did this all the time. He heard them in classes and the corridors, a wee bit about what you were wearing, an exchange about your boyfriend, a worry that your fanny leaked white discharge—nothing was ever too much for women to talk about.

No. Not ready.

"Someone I once knew."

"An old boyfriend?" Questioning. Not an easy thing to do. Kippy imagined a Mick double, this time with a posh accent and too much money. And some sort of cruelty—he dated her, dumped her and then told everyone she was a shite kisser.

Lillian finished her tea. As it was only early June, the room didn't need lights, but the setting sun threw shadows. If he didn't look closely, Lillian could be one of many men who'd graced his bed in the last few months. All he saw was an outline, a face in profile as it took yet another long draw on a cigarette.

"No," a whisper, "but just like Mick. One of those big-headed, utter wanker twats."

He raised his head at that. Lillian hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in them. He heard stifled sobs and sat beside her, a hand awkwardly patting her on the back.

"I know folks," he said, "I can have him killed if you want."

Lillian's sobbing mass transferred its centre of gravity, shifting so her arms hung over his shoulders. The arm pulled him closer. Her mouth planted itself next to his ear. "Kill him. Only if I can be there. And they make it truly painful, excruciatingly, awfully, horribly..."

Oh. No. The arm pulled him in, intimacy exchanged, Lillian wanted more. His cock hardened anyway. He could have thrown away the line, "Don't take it personally, love. It does this whatever."  The jeans he wore did nothing to disguise it and they both stared at it, the bulge.

Dulux paint chart—Orchid White, Magnolia, Cornish Cream...

Kippy disentangled himself, pulling back his arms slowly and shuffling away so he no longer sat right next to her. The final step was to remove her arm. He took it off him as gently as he could and kissed the top of her head.

"I'm sorry."

What to do? Her head drooped, and he couldn't see her eyes. He fast-forwarded to tomorrow morning and weeks of avoiding each other—ducking out of sight when they spotted each other in corridors, seating themselves at the furthest away ends of lecture halls and classrooms.

He crouched down before her and tipped her head up, so she looked at him, eyes swollen and red. They held his gaze.

"I love you, Lillian." A first, this declaration. Weren't you meant to say it for the first time to someone you also wanted to shag? Did this waste the sentiment? He regretted it for a couple of seconds and recovered. Lillian's face suffused with colour, the smile plumping up her cheeks and adding brightness to her eyes.

"Not in that way." She'd said it first. "I know that, really."

He sat down, the haunches position too awkward to hold. "Good. I'll still organise for Mr Big-headed Wanker to die if ye want? Jordan knows every dodgy bastard in Glasgow."

"Him!" she sniffed, but there was still a smile in her eyes. She stretched out and wriggled, the movement sending those biscuit crumbs Kippy had worried about earlier flying in all directions. He was half tempted to pounce and tickle her, but if words should match actions, it wasn't a good idea.

"You hate this, don't you?" she said. "It tortures you, me covering your bed in little itty-bitty crumbs and—"

Lillian made her movements bigger, wriggling on the bed and giggling. He laughed too—it was too daft and too much, after an evening of such weirdness. First, seeing your old friend on TV, then Lillian's reactions and confidences, successfully shaking off her pass at him and retaining their friendship. The love declaration was real, he promised himself.

Job done, my son!

A tiny bit of white slithered from underneath the bed.

Oh. Ye. Christs.

He saw it in slow motion, him diving forward to stop the full slithering out of paper, her turning on the bed, to glancing down to her left. "Oh! What's this?"

And it happened. Kippy's bed had taken too much action for the night. It gave up its secrets—the picture of John, long-ago drawn and hidden crackled under, a corner of it nagging to be grabbed by the nosy.

"That's John!" she said, the picture held in front of her and her expression incredulous. "Bloody hell, this is...

Her forehead moved, from wide-eyed astonishment to low cunning. "Ah! The mystery explained. And he doesn't know, does he?"

She pushed herself to her feet, the picture clutched to her chest. "I'm going to do something about it!"