‘Yes. They’re asking for offers over eight hundred and fifty thousand. I thought that if we put in nine hundred and fifty they might take it straight away.’

The lawyer cleared her throat. ‘Well, they might, but they might want to give the other people a chance – the ones who have noted an interest.’ She hesitated. ‘And although we can make it subject to survey, I would advise rather strongly against going in with an offer when you haven’t checked up on some pretty basic things.’

Matthew tried to sound firm. ‘I want it,’ he said. ‘Elspeth loves it. I want to get it for her.’

The lawyer understood. ‘I have to advise you of the dangers,’ she said. ‘But ultimately it’s your decision. Are you sure?’

He was sure.

‘Then I’ll phone their solicitors and have a word with them. Who is it?’

‘McKay Norwell. They’re in Rutland Square. I spoke to their property person, Lesley Kerr, I think it was.’

‘I know her,’ said the lawyer. ‘And they’re a good firm. I’ll have a word.’

Matthew put down the phone and went into the kitchen, where Elspeth was boiling an egg. ‘I suddenly felt hungry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s odd to be sitting down eating a boiled egg on impulse, but …’ She shrugged.

‘You can have a boiled egg whenever you want,’ said Matthew. ‘You can have anything – anything.’

She looked at him fondly. Dear Matthew – he was so generous. And yet she did not want anything. She wanted only those things that she deserved, and she was not sure that she deserved all this attention, all this solicitude. She was not sure that she deserved a flat in Moray Place just because she had walked past it and decided that she might like to live there. Would it be different, she wondered, if Matthew had actually earned all this money? Would her feelings of guilt be any different then? Or should she not feel guilty about good fortune – whatever its source? Was it a peculiar Scottish trait to feel guilty about what you had in this life; was this all down to the Reformation and to the stern doctrines of individual effort and merit that had sprung from all that? Such an effect did exist – she was sure of it; she had had an uncle who had felt like that. Anything good, anything positive, was seen by him as a dubious privilege that would be paid for dearly; even a fine day – in Scotland a rare gift of those most fickle local weather gods – would be paid for by cold and damp later on. The bill for a warm spring was a miserable, rain-sodden summer; the bill for happiness was subsequent anxiety about the loss of exactly that happiness – it was a bleak system of double-entry book-keeping, but one that had a firm root in the Scottish psyche. And was that what she was like, she asked herself.