She turned to Matthew, who was standing at the other end of the room, peering at a painting on the wall.

‘What is it?’ she said.

Her voice sounded small in the large room. She repeated her question, unsure that he had heard it.

His reply was half mumbled. ‘Fergusson,’ he said. ‘A picture of a woman reading. His sister, I think. He painted his sister reading – I’ve seen another one just like this somewhere.’

Her eyes were drawn to the garden again. There was a small lead statue placed close to the wall on one side. It was a child, a girl, with skirts that reached almost to the feet. Half of the child’s face was in shadow; the other in the sun. It was very skilful, she thought, to make lead seem so light, so flowing. She thought that she might draw Matthew’s attention to this and say …

She fell – not to the floor, but halfway across a chair, so that her head did not hit the ground. As she fell, she saw for a moment the face of the child. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud and the light that had played on the statue was no longer there.

46. What We Really Are

After Angus Lordie had made his purchases at Stewart, Christie in Queen Street, he decided to walk directly to Domenica’s flat in Scotland Street. He had intended to visit his friend the day before, but had been distracted from his purpose by a series of telephone calls and minor disturbances. His electricity meter had to be read; there was a parcel delivery for his neighbour, who was out at the time; there was a surveyor who wanted to get access to the shared roof space because the flat next door was for sale and his ladder was not long enough; and so on. By the time all of this had been dealt with, his morning, he felt, was ruined, and it was too late to visit Domenica, who would have left for Valvona & Crolla by then. She went every day, it seemed, often for small purchases – a handful of mushrooms, a few slices of salami, a single serving of pasta.

‘You could do a big shopping trip once a week,’ Angus had once pointed out to her.

‘Please mind your own business, Angus,’ she had replied. And when he had looked injured by this abrupt response she had relented and explained. ‘Shopping is a small, quotidian transaction. We need these to anchor our lives.’

He had looked at her blankly, and she had continued. ‘The day needs to be punctuated, you see. The hours of the Church, for instance – lauds, terce, sext and all the rest – are a way of breaking up the day, a way of making landmarks in our lives.’

He had smiled. ‘You’re talking like an anthropologist.’

‘I am an anthropologist, Angus.’ She paused. ‘Or I was.’