The noise of the traffic diminished, and the only sounds were their breathing, growing deeper as they walked, and the soft susurrus of the wind in the grass. As the fresh air filled his lungs, even his sneezing diminished.

It was cold, however, despite the poncho, but, after nearly two weeks in Scotland, he wasn’t about to admit that.

They turned west again, and followed a path Jane called the Radical Road, which ran at the foot of a low crag. She said, “This is the north end of Salisbury Crag.”

He stepped forward and ran his fingers over the exposed rock. “It’s a sill,” he said. “A sheet of basalt.”

“I know.”

“Geologists like basalts,” he murmured. “They’re what you get when planets melt. And they tell you a lot about hidden processes…” He ran his hands over the other layers. “Looks like baked shale above it. Maybe cementstone. And below, this is sandstone—”

“I know that too. This is what’s left of the Old Red Sandstone Continent.”

“You’re a smart cookie.”

They walked on, along the base of the crag.

At length she said, “I don’t know if I like being called a ‘cookie’.”

“You’re very competitive, aren’t you?”

“And you’re not too good with people.”

He made to deny it, or to come back with a snappy answer. But he shrugged. “Maybe not. You know, when I was doing my doctoral research I spent eighteen months in Norway, clambering around the fjords there. A lot of that time I spent alone. Working alone in tough terrain like that is something most geologists would frown on, but you do it anyway, when you are short on time or you’re too poor to pay for a field assistant. As I was.

“So I climbed over the ice rivers, trekked past sheer rock walls, trying to make the most out of the money it had cost me to go there. Oh, I knew my limits; I saved the really tough country for those times when I was accompanied. But I wasn’t afraid of being out on a limb. Relying on myself.”

“And,” she said drily, “your point?”

“Well, when I look back on it that was one of the happiest times of my life. Because it was the simplest. People just—”

“Make things complicated?”

“Something like that.”

“You never answered Dad’s question.”

“Divorced,” he said. “Just.”

“Jack’s father left when he was still small He doesn’t remember him.”

“You don’t need to tell me.”

“I want to tell you. Jack was a glue baby, if I’m honest. You know what that means?”

“I guess.”

“So, good riddance.”

“Right…”

He liked the way the deepening light caught the planes of her face. It seemed to emphasize the strength and intelligence there.

He sneezed violently.