He looked disappointed. ‘It could happen,’ he said. ‘And such people would have heels of different heights on their shoes – so that they could walk about their flats without listing to one side. And then …’

She interrupted him. ‘The surveyor.’

‘Yes, of course.’ He rose from the table and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so, maybe less. This is going to be a formality. He’ll whizz in and out – shine his torch round a bit, maybe – and that’ll be it.’

He made his way along Heriot Row towards Moray Place. Arriving outside the flat – now with its Sold notice very satisfactorily displayed – he tried the front door, to discover that it was still locked; the surveyor was not there. The flat was not yet his, in the sense that he had not yet been granted what his solicitor had described as entry and actual occupation, and so he did not have the key – that would have been entrusted to the surveyor for the survey, to be returned afterwards to the selling agents.

He looked up at the sky. When you owned property, you owned it from the ground all the way up to the sky – or so he assumed – which meant that he owned, or would soon own, that bit of sky directly above his new garden. This also meant that the clouds that crossed that little patch of land were, for a moment, his; as was the rain that fell on that same bit of ground. And if a bird should land on one of his shrubs, it was, for a few moments, his bird. He smiled. That, surely, was not true. We did not own these wild creatures – not really; nor did we own the land, whatever the law might say about that. Some lines of a poem came back to him, and he struggled to remember who had written them – Norman MacCaig? Yes, it was him, he thought. He had asked who owned a glen – the tycoon who possessed it, or he, who was possessed by it. Matthew knew the answer.

He was lost in these thoughts when the surveyor arrived. He heard a vehicle drawing to a halt and the engine being turned off. He looked round.

Bruce emerged from the car.

‘Oh …’ It took Matthew a moment to remember. Bruce was a surveyor – of course he was. And he specialised in domestic property – he had told him that once in the Cumberland Bar. But … Bruce, of all people, was hardly a figure to inspire confidence.

‘Hah!’ said Bruce. ‘Surprised you, didn’t I? When I got the call from the lawyers I recognised the name. I wondered if there could be two people of the same name in this town, but then I thought: only one with the readies to buy this sort of place! How are you doing?’

‘Not badly,’ said Matthew. ‘We’re moving from India Street and …’