After the rave, we couldn't go out in Swindon without people coming up to us and asking when we were having another. Girls who had completely ignored us a few weeks before now started talking to us. We got invited to loads of parties. The front seat of the Ratmobile began to see some action and 1999 passed in a flurry of half-remembered revelry.

We were the wild bunch of Swindon, always on the edge of getting into serious trouble but somehow always avoiding any repercussions. Flinty got his collar felt once in the summer for possession but got let off with a warning. He was dead lucky. He'd unloaded a batch of hash sticks a few minutes earlier and only had a tiny amount left on him.

And if we were wild before we watched Trainspotting that October, we were positively feral afterwards. We identified with the characters, even if we couldn't understand half of what they were saying. We loved the opening scene in the film when Renton, Spud and Sick Boy were caught shoplifting and chased by security guards through the city centre. After that, we considered paying for anything in a shop a sign of failure. Renton's voice-over during the chase about the futility of life resonated with our frustration about our own lack of prospects. Successive Tory governments under Thatcher and Major had destroyed British industry and left us high and dry in a sea of unemployment. Like Renton, we chose not to choose a normal life, we chose something else. We chose high and never dry. We got stoned whenever we could and hammered the rest of the time. The film screamed at us; 'You don't have to live by the rules!'

But four years in the army had cured me of my rebellious streak and taught me the value of self-discipline. It seemed that Flinty and Spud had never really grown up. They were both still as irresponsible as teenagers.

***

'The best bit of lifting I ever did,' Flinty boasted, 'was on Christmas Eve when I swiped a gold necklace from the jewellery department in Debenhams.'

'Flinty, wasn't that a few days before Christmas?' Spud asked quietly.

'No ... no, it was definitely Christmas Eve 'cos we reckoned the shops would be packed with shoppers all trying to buy last-minute prezzies, and we needed some readies for the disco in the Oak later on. I'm sure it was Christmas Eve.'

I caught Spud giving Flinty a very strange look, and I had an inkling that Spud didn't want me to know about the necklace. Then I realised that Flinty was talking about the day Paul died and I guessed that Spud thought I wouldn't want any reminders about that day.

'We were having a couple of beers in the town centre and I came up with this great plan ... and it worked a treat!' Flinty continued. 'I went up to the jewellery department in Deb's and started telling this old bird behind the counter how I wanted a nice expensive gold chain for my girlfriend. I was laying it on thick, saying I was going to ask her to marry me and all that shit. So she gets this chain out and lets me hold it up and examine it and, right at that moment, Spud comes barging through the store, all muffled up with a woolly hat and scarf. He gives me a shove as he passes and I fall on the floor as if I've been pole-axed and slip the chain down the side of my shoe. The old girl scoots around and helps me up, saying what a rude man that was and asking if I'm okay. Then I make out that the bloke has snatched the chain out of my hand and start yelling and making a big fuss. She calls one of the security men over and explains what's happened but by then, Spud is long gone.'

Spud had remained silent, looking down at the table all through Flinty's story. I couldn't figure out why he seemed so reticent. It wasn't like him.

'What did you do with the chain?' I asked.

'We met up back in the pub ... it was the Queen's Head wasn't it Spud?'

'Yeah, the Queen's Head,' Spud confirmed.

'Then we went round to one of those "We Buy Gold" places and weighed it in. Got 150 quid for it, no questions asked. We went back to the pub and spent the whole afternoon celebrating.'

***

It came as no surprise that they'd been on a shoplifting expedition without me. I was useless at it and was usually sent to distract shop assistants while they did the thieving. I well remembered how Flinty used to laugh at me, saying I had a guilt complex and that I needed to get over it. We never steal from real working people he used to argue, only money-grabbing capitalist corporations that could well afford it.

I was wondering if he only swiped car keys from capitalist's coat pockets when a thought occurred to me.

'So did you ever make it to the Royal Oak that night?' I asked.

'Course we did. We were there waiting for you to show up.'

'How did you get there? It's miles out of town.'

'Caught a bus, of course,' Flinty told me.

I felt the hackles on the back of my neck rise. There was something going on here that I didn't understand. I knew that on the day Paul died we'd had a massive snowfall. There were no buses running in Swindon that evening.

***

We ate the pork pies and the last three Cherry Bakewells while we chatted about Trainspotting. Spud bet Flinty 20 quid he wouldn't dare toss a pint glass off the balcony in the Crosslands like Begbie did in the film.

'I'll take you up on that,' he said, shaking his hand. 'I'll do it just as we're leaving, then it doesn't matter if we get chucked out.'

Flinty poured himself another whisky. The bottle was going down fast, even though I'd stuck mostly to beer. He pulled the thin curtain back and wiped the condensation off the window so we could peer outside. It was already dark, and the orange glow from the sodium lamps in the foggy parking area reminded me of the desert sandstorms in Afghanistan.

'It looks like its stopped raining,' I said. 'But still no sign of that fog clearing.'

'Well I don't mind staying here another night,' Flinty admitted. 'As long as we don't run out of firewater I'm quite happy. It's been a perfect day.'

As if on cue, Spud and Flinty immediately burst into the Lou Reed song from Trainspotting ... and I soon joined in.

'Oh, it's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
You just keep me hanging on.'

***

When we finished singing Spud and Flinty lit up another spliff and we all sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then Flinty piped up again.

'I'll tell you another good laugh you missed out on,' he said, pointing his spliff at me. 'The time me and Spud nicked a Golf GTI and did donuts in the snow all over Swindon. When was that, Spud? I was slightly bladdered at the time.'

'It was a few days after Christmas,' Spud said firmly ... and I could have sworn that he kicked Flinty under the table.

The mention of a Golf GTI hit me like a punch in the gut. It took me back to January of 2000 when the detective investigating Paul's death had come to our house again.

He wanted to update us on the investigation. They had found a broken wing mirror buried in the snow close to Paul's body. It was the only evidence found at the scene. But, on the evening of his death, the fire brigade had been called out to a car fire on some wasteland quite near our home. The car was totally burnt out and had been reported stolen from outside a pub in Swindon town centre. They couldn't get any forensics from the car,but it was a Golf GTI, and the passenger side wing mirror was missing. I knew the piece of wasteland. It was only 400 yards from the Royal Oak pub.