Pat looked away. Matthew was not making it any easier for her. What could she tell him? That Kirsty had been responsible for not just one young man abandoning his degree course, but two? That she was said to have been responsible for the most disastrous skiing trip in the history of the university ski society? That she had stolen the boyfriend of a girl in Pat’s year, and had dumped him after a mere three weeks? These were only some of the charges outstanding against Kirsty, but she wondered how she could provide the evidence that Matthew appeared to need.

Pat had surrendered, and they had gone into the gallery, where Matthew had witnessed their meeting. Nothing had happened; they had been polite to one another, and indeed Kirsty had seemed quite pleased to see Pat. Then they had discussed a rota and how they would split the hours between them. That, too, had been quite amicable.

‘You see?’ whispered Matthew to Pat, when Kirsty went to fetch something from the back room. ‘What’s the problem? She’s fine – she really is.’

‘Just you wait,’ Pat whispered back. ‘I’m not making it up, Matthew. I’m not, you know.’

Shortly before twelve, Matthew had left the gallery in the charge of the two girls. He was meeting Elspeth for lunch, he explained, and then he was going to Moray Place to see the surveyor whom they had commissioned to survey the new flat. ‘I probably won’t be back,’ he said. ‘So could one of you lock up at five?’

Kirsty agreed to do this. ‘Pat and I will be fine,’ she said. ‘Won’t we, Pat?’

Pat had nodded, but Matthew had noticed the look of reservation, a glance in his direction. He chose to ignore it. Women were odd about these things, he told himself. Half the time it’s unspoken jealousy – Kirsty was a rival; that must have been it. It was all reducible to competition between members of the same sex; competition for the scarce resource – men. That was what Matthew thought.

He left the gallery and made his way to Glass and Thompson’s café at the intersection with Heriot Row. As he went down the couple of steps to the front door, he saw that Elspeth was already there, sitting at one of the tables opposite the service counter, reading a magazine. Matthew appeared at her table and put his hand over a page of the magazine. ‘Boo,’ he said.

Elspeth smiled. ‘I was reading my horoscope.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Pure fiction.’

She shrugged. ‘Plenty of people believe in them.’

Matthew pointed out that people believed in all sorts of ridiculous things. ‘There are few limits to human gullibility,’ he said. ‘Flying saucers and so on. Angels. Horoscopes. It’s all wishful thinking.’

‘Angels?’ asked Elspeth. ‘You don’t believe in angels?’