Zoe’s mother, on the other hand, sporadically tried her best. It was with her mother that Zoe went shopping, the only place they went together. In Ayrness town centre, at the weekends, Zoe’s mum tried on heavily-scented gloop and overly-tight Lycra. None of her efforts achieved what she wanted. Zoe, finding lipsticks and mascara wands discarded in the bathroom bin, felt angry/upset with these unassailable commodities. But she was relieved, when exploring her aunts’ bedrooms one Christmas at Eva’s, to find evidence, there too, of inhuman female effort. She touched her finger to the lid of a glass perfume bottle; put that finger to her nostrils. She ran her hands over a smooth leather handbag with a shiny metal clasp. In the wardrobe hung printed dresses, big-bowed blouses, brightly coloured slacks. They, too, stank of womanhood’s conflicted/yukky odour.

Once, when Eva was still adhering to the Harcourt-Vane tradition of the Christmas party, and Zoe, aged about eleven, was handing out trays of vol-au-vent, she made her way through the crowded sitting room and into the hall, to find her Aunt Octavia coming downstairs. Zoe saw her taking out her cigarettes, and her lighter. She saw her pick up a coat from the stand in the hall, and open the front door. By the time Zoe had got through the burst of people, Octavia was sitting in the porch, hunched into her coat, staring out gloomily into the blackness and the rain, cigarette smoke wreathing itself around her head like a pack of whining dogs.

‘Would you like an Island Puff?’ Zoe said to Octavia’s back. ‘I think they’re the nicest. It’s squash from the Tarbert Veg Scheme and soft cheese made by the Lerston Dairy. It’s an almost entirely indigenous product.’

Octavia turned to look at her, refused the puffs with an upturned hand, and Zoe thought that was going to be it, except that her aunt, putting her cigarette-free hand up to Zoe’s ponytail, said, ‘Why don’t you wear it down?’

This was such an unexpected piece of attention that Zoe stared. Octavia, who, up-close, had wrinkles of worry across her forehead, looked incredible from afar. With her expensive clothes and upright posture, she looked like something from a magazine, Zoe thought. Which possibly she was. (In some magazine, somewhere; in somebody’s far-off world.)

Zoe placed the tray of vol-au-vent carefully on the bench so that Octavia could pull her hair out from its band and consider her chances. ‘There’s a product for this problem,’ Octavia said, musingly, as she felt the texture of Zoe’s hair, between thumb and forefinger. ‘Sit,’ she said, indicating the bench.