She hadn’t even felt able to tell her husband, William, who was on the Northern Channel exploratory rig. Not until he got home. But she’d wait here in Glasgow for him until he returned, just a few more days, and then they would go south together, and be a family once more.

She patted the bulge of her stomach. Soon be a bigger family, in fact; another thing she hadn’t felt able to tell William while he was working so hard, desperately trying to get them a stash of money before the rig work finally disappeared.

The rest of the day stretched before her, empty.

She could go back to the flat. It was on the edge of the Gorbals, where she and William had both grown up, but their flat was one of the better conversions that had been done in the 1980s to attract the yuppies, and now a lot of their money was tied up in it, and of course they couldn’t sell it for love or money since the Edinburgh stuff started happening on the TV. Well, now it was going to stand empty. The police said it would be secure until they were able to return, when the Government got this volcano stuff under control.

There was still some packing to do. But the flat would feel very empty without the kids.

And there was something she had promised herself for a long time.

She went out to the taxi rank. Soon she was in the back of a cab, whizzing along the motorway to the south-west, through Clydebank and Oban.

She reached Pollok Park, and here was the Burrell Collection, airy rooms with a woodland backdrop, stuffed full of the art gathered by William Burrell, a dead ship-owner.

There were figures and statues and heads from Greece and Rome and Mesopotamia and Egypt. She especially liked the porcelain flower girls — the pieces which would fit best in her own flat, she thought, if she was allowed to take something away. And the place was full of surprises, for instance the old doorways and lintels and jambs that had been built into the fabric of the museum.

There were notices saying there had been pressure from the Government to crate up the collection and ship it south, or abroad, until the emergency was over. But the city council had resisted. And Jenny was glad.

She’d lived all her life in Glasgow without seeing this. William would never have been interested in coming here, bless him, and the kids were still too young. Well, it would always be here, in the future.