And yet fanciful fiction could reflect real life just as vividly as its more prosaic equivalent; she had read that somewhere, in a novel perhaps.

17. The News from Arbroath

In a quite different coffee bar, on the other side of town, Big Lou was preparing to receive her morning regulars – Matthew, Angus Lordie and Angus Lordie’s dog, Cyril. Angus was generally unreliable, she thought, and might drop in any time between ten and ten-thirty, whereas Matthew was punctual to a degree. If the citizens of Königsberg had been able to set their watches by the sight of Immanuel Kant taking his morning walk, then the citizens of Edinburgh, or at least those who lived in Dundas Street, could do likewise with Matthew. He left his gallery on the other side of the road at exactly ten o’clock, and began his descent of Big Lou’s stairs precisely three minutes later. Marriage had not changed his habits in this respect at least, thought Big Lou – which was reassuring; she liked Matthew and, although she would never say it, she would not want him to change.

Now it was exactly 10.03, and from her position behind her counter, where she was polishing the surfaces with a cloth, Big Lou could see Matthew’s legs at the top of her stairs; soon the rest of him would heave into sight, and she would be able to see whether he was still wearing that distressed-oatmeal sweater of his. That was one thing his new wife could do for him, thought Big Lou: the distressed-oatmeal sweater could go.

Matthew, in fact, was not wearing the distressed-oatmeal sweater, which had already fallen foul of Elspeth Harmony’s reorganisation of his wardrobe. In its place he had a light grey linen jacket that Elspeth had found for him somewhere on George Street. It was not ordinary linen, in that it had none of the vices that make linen such a contrary fabric; this was easily ironed linen that did not crumple excessively and did not look like Auden’s face, with all its lines and crevasses.

Complementing the jacket was a pair of black jeans – a garment that Elspeth had found in a drawer in Matthew’s (now their) room and of which she had expressed approval. Matthew had donned the jeans gingerly, as he had no idea where they came from. If they were in his flat, and in his drawer, then they must belong to him, but he had no recollection of either ever buying them, or even wearing them. They fitted, though, and even if he found a receipt in a pocket, indecipherably signed with a signature other than his own, the fact that they were his exact size was a prima facie indication of his ownership of them.

‘You look good in those,’ said Elspeth appreciatively. ‘They sort of hug your thighs. There. Look. Isn’t that nice?’