‘It’s not Bertie’s fault he’s not allowed chocolate,’ said Tofu. ‘It’s his mother. She’s a cow, isn’t she, Bertie?’

Bertie said nothing; Olive glared at Tofu. ‘I doubt if you know what I’m talking about, Tofu,’ she said. ‘You get soya chocolate at home, I suppose. Soya chocolate! Hah!’

Pansy, who had joined the discussion, laughed. ‘Poor Tofu,’ she said.

Tofu fixed his gaze on Olive. ‘You stink,’ he said.

It had not been an edifying discussion, and Bertie put it out of his mind as he reached out and picked two further chocolate bars, more or less at random. Then, following his father, he made his way to the cash desk.

Once back in the car, he laid the chocolate and crisps out on his lap and stared at them. They were real. This was really happening. He was going fishing with his father, and the sun had burst out from behind a bank of cloud, now dispelled, filling the sky, touching all Scotland, and all its hills, it seemed, with gold.

68. The Need for Evidence

Matthew spent little more than an hour in the gallery that morning. It had not been easy: he had been completely taken aback by Pat’s disinclination to enter the door once she had glimpsed Kirsty through the window.

‘But you hardly know her,’ he protested. ‘You said so yourself.’

Pat peered through the glass: she could just make out the figure of Kirsty in the back room. ‘She’s bad news, Matthew. She really is.’

Matthew sighed. ‘You can’t just say things like that. What do you mean, “She’s bad news”?’

‘Just that,’ said Pat. ‘Some people are … bad news. One can’t necessarily say much more than that.’ As she spoke, she thought of Bruce. He was bad news; very bad news, really. But if you had to describe exactly why he was bad news, it would be difficult: somehow one would not get just the right flavour of the numerous ways in which Bruce failed the good news test. It was the same with Kirsty – and yet she was not sure how to explain all this to Matthew.

‘She has a reputation,’ she said.

Matthew looked at her in astonishment. ‘But everybody has a reputation. A reputation can be quite neutral, or even good. You have to have evidence, anyway.’