‘They mentioned it a few weeks ago.’ The phone was muffled, and she heard him shout, ‘All right, keep your hair on!’ as someone banged on the train toilet door. ‘We were going to tell you in Edinburgh, but now you need some space to work through this – crisis, or whatever it is.’ The familiar sneer in the voice. ‘That changes things completely, doesn’t it?’

‘How so?’ She would have said no whatever had happened. Her roots stretched between here and London, shoots everywhere, closely entwined with others. She and Mack had fallen in love in London. The year after they’d married, living just outside Inverness in another barely habitable restoration project, had been amongst the loneliest of her life.

‘Oliver needs stability.’

At the mention of the name, she couldn’t speak, the lump in her throat choking her.

Mack knew precisely how much she hated him calling their son that. Like many oldest children, he’d been christened with a traditional family forename, shared with a paternal great-grandfather on whom Mack had doted.

It’s Kes, she wanted to shout through the suffocating neck-hold. His name is Kes.

A white van had parked by the Memorial Hall entrance from which two bull-necked men were unloading disco equipment.

Mack’s voice softened winningly. ‘The boy loves Scotland.’

Finally the throat-lock released, her voice flat and artificial, the familiar steely calm framing it. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mack. I know this is just you trying to punish me, but it’s gone far enough. We have a business to run down here, a home here, and Kes goes to school here. That’s his stability.’

‘Marianne says she’ll have a word with the head at her boys’ pre-prep. It’s a superb school.’ So his sister was in on it too, with her sideways smiles, always acting like a one-woman mouthpiece for the Scottish Tourist Board. The Forsyth clan were quorate. ‘We have to put Kes first, wee bird. Think of the benefits.’

Mack started talking in his corporate presentation voice, turning crib notes into unhurried, self-assured conviction. He dropped just enough poison bullet points in amongst the plus points to paralyse her – seen too many messy divorces not to appreciate the stable family, his stay-at-home sister and mother on tap for childcare, outstanding schooling with close cousins. Compare that to her own mother’s history of abandonment, her father’s tragic end, the mess Pax had made of things after abandoning the Bardswolds for London. ‘You’ll always be better with Kes and me, Tishy. I saved you, remember.’

If there was one thing guaranteed to humiliate her, it was that.

He went on, slick as always, quick to point out that once their portfolio was sold – a small matter of three overspecced luxury barn conversions and a half-finished rectory, all majority-owned by investors and the bank – they’d be wise to cut their losses. The Cotswold exercise had proved a much lower return than anticipated in the current climate. He had good contacts in Scotland, the surveying work guaranteed to supplement restoration.