At the end of the call, Katrina felt put out, but Jill and Chris came to the wedding two months later, at Glasgow City Chambers, and made a show of being cheerful. They even presented Katrina and John with a case of champagne, and Katrina was worried about how they’d afforded it. But John said it was a cheap kind of champagne, not really champagne at all, and wouldn’t have cost them much.

The other guests at the wedding were Katrina’s mother, who cried during the toasts afterwards at the George Hotel and said she didn’t feel like she was losing a daughter so much as gaining a son; Katrina’s friend Mae who had come all the way up from London for the occasion; Katrina’s school friend Beth whom she hardly saw by then, but felt she ought to invite; and John’s brother Malcolm with his wife Heather—a quiet, gentle couple who appeared rather out of their depth throughout the day. John’s mother, apparently, was not well enough to make the crossing over to the mainland, and John’s father was dead. The guest list looked a bit sparse to Katrina in the run-up to the wedding, and she had asked John if there were any friends he’d like to invite. He’d shaken his head and said, “The only person I need is you,” and Katrina had been satisfied with this, because she felt the same.

She had agreed with John that they’d move to Litta to have a family, but she had thought this would be a few years into the future. She’d envisaged spending a while longer in Glasgow, living in the flat he rented, cooking for him, going out to the pub some evenings, reading together by their gas heater, spending long, lazy weekends in bed, luxuriating in their love for one another.

However, far more quickly than Katrina had anticipated—within a month of the wedding, in fact—she was pregnant. She’d wanted for some time to go on the pill, but John had never liked the idea; he said it was dangerous, and anyway, it encouraged promiscuity.

“Promiscuity?” she said. “Are you serious?”

“I meant in general. I didn’t mean you in particular.”

“Oh, thanks,” Katrina said.

He laughed and put out his hand to her. “The side effects, my love. It can be really dangerous. Won’t you trust me with this? I’ll take care of it, I promise.”