‘Yes, that worked. But – and this is the interesting part. She forgot to put the snake in position one night, and when she went downstairs the next morning, she had a Mother Hubbard moment – no food. All snacked.’

‘Oh.’

‘Indeed. This shows that while she was asleep she was, at some level, aware of the fact that she had forgotten to put the snake in place. The inhibition against going to the fridge was therefore not operating. So this suggests that …’

Angus waited. He was interested to find out just what the implications of this were.

Domenica looked thoughtful. ‘It means,’ she went on, ‘that we can still be expected to behave ourselves when we are asleep.’

‘Surely not,’ said Angus. ‘If I say something terrible in my sleep, I would hope not to be held accountable. I don’t think—’

‘But it shows what you really want to say,’ interrupted Domenica. ‘It’s rather like drunkenness. Nice people are nice when they’re drunk – nasty people are nasty.’ She paused. ‘Auden said something similar about the weather, if I remember correctly. He said that nice weather is what nasty people are nasty about and the nice take pleasure in observing. Something like that.’

Angus rose to his feet and crossed to the window. ‘I never tire of your view,’ he said. ‘Never.’

‘It’s a great consolation,’ said Domenica. A consolation for … for … Well, it was a consolation for everything, really.

‘And look at that sky,’ said Angus. ‘We’re so fortunate, aren’t we? To live in a country where the sky changes virtually every moment; where its colours, its attenuated blues, its whites, its purples break the heart, and then break it again, afresh, every single day.’

49. Chinoiserie

When he saw Elspeth collapse, for a moment Matthew was unable to do anything, experiencing, for the first time in his life, a complete paralysis of disbelief and indecision. Then, once the initial shock had passed, he leaped forward, knocking over a small mahogany table. The noise of the toppling table, which had supported a glass bowl, now smashed, was drowned by Matthew’s cry of anguish.

The solicitor’s assistant was in the kitchen, where she was absorbed in a copy of Scottish Interiors. The feature she was reading was an article on a house in a Fife fishing village that had been restored by a Dundee architect and his wife. Everything was white, as far as she could make out, and minimalist. She held the page away from her to test the perspective. No, definitely too many sharp corners and hard surfaces. Could minimalism not be a bit softer?