If Diane had time on her hands, so did Lizzie. Since graduating from Strathclyde, she had held down a number of temporary jobs, but nothing permanent. Again this did not matter unduly; if the worst came to the worst – and she was confident it would not – she could always work for a maternal uncle who ran a small chain of restaurants and had promised her work if she ever needed it. For the time being, though, there were plenty of jobs to be applied for and interviews to attend.

On this particular morning, Lizzie asked her friend if she thought that it was possible that people still married for what she described as ‘other reasons’. Diane was not sure what she meant, and looked puzzled. ‘Other reasons? You mean because they’re forced to? Or in a fit of absent-mindedness?’

No, that was not it. ‘For … well, I suppose you’d say for money. For somebody’s money.’

Diane shrugged. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘They used to do that sort of thing back in … back in prehistoric times – the 1960s and so on.’

‘So you think it doesn’t happen today?’

Diane thought for a moment. ‘Maybe now and then. I suppose that money comes into the picture with arranged marriages, but otherwise … no, I don’t think so.’

‘So when you see a man of seventy marrying somebody of twenty, it’s nothing to do with the fact that he’s rich?’

Diane laughed. ‘No. Of course that’s all to do with money. What I meant is that when there’s nothing like that in the picture then people these days marry because they like the person.’ She paused. ‘Why do you ask? Has anybody said anything?’

Lizzie hesitated. She was loyal to her father, but she nonetheless felt that she needed to discuss this with somebody, and Diane was as close a friend as she had.

‘My dad said something,’ she confided. ‘He tried to be tactful about it but I could tell what he meant. He asked me whether I thought Bruce had asked me to marry him because of my money.’ Watching the effect of her remarks on her friend, she quickly added, ‘Not that I’ve got any.’

Diane smiled. ‘You must have. You must have something. There’s your flat. You own that outright, don’t you?’

‘It was my grandmother’s,’ said Lizzie apologetically. ‘She left it to me. So I didn’t have to pay anything for it.’

‘But it’s worth quite a bit, isn’t it? A three-bedroom flat in Morningside …’

‘Only two proper-size bedrooms,’ interjected Lizzie. ‘The third one’s really a boxroom.’

Diane ignored the objection. ‘Three hundred thousand pounds, at least,’ she said, a note of wistfulness in her voice. ‘Three hundred and fifty thousand, maybe. Even in this market.’

Lizzie looked out of the window again. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘The sun.’