I had the privilege of hearing James Kelman read this story at the opening of the Word Festival in Aberdeen a few years ago. All the urgency, intensity and heartbreak of the story was captured by a pitch-perfect reading. It was a special event and I’ll never forget it.

I could hardly breathe as he read it, and I remember speaking to other people at the time who felt it was a very special event.

The story is about a man trying to get to a job interview and, taking a shortcut in the teeming rain, he goes “by the burn”. What you get in six short pages is a magnificent snapshot of a life in turmoil. It begins in a darkly comic vein as an intense monologue in the man’s head: it’s muddy, he’s late and the wind and the rain are lashing down. Then, gradually, we begin to realise that his life is unravelling after the death of his child. As Kelman was reading it, the audience was held there in this man's mind, conscious of the pain and aware of a loss from which it is impossible to recover. It was so compelling and moving, an extraordinary portrait of human emotion.

I’d read the story many years before. When I first came to Scotland in 1992, James Kelman was one of the first writers I read in my introduction to contemporary Scottish literature. Everything about his writing grabbed me — the language, the structure and, in particular, his portrayal of ordinary people.

I think this story is one of his best.

Interestingly enough, I mentioned this reading to James Kelman when I met him recently and he said that he remembered giving it. He shook his head and smiled: “Sometimes you just know. Sometimes everything comes together.”

Meaghan Delahunt discusses her new novel, The Red Book, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 18, www.edbookfest.co.uk

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