Matthew picked up a newspaper from the table near the door; a ten-day-old copy of the Dundee Courier, the paper that kept Big Lou informed about events at home. The articles and photographs in these stale papers, posted down to Lou from Arbroath, were annotated by an ancient relative with little observations and reminders. ‘Remember him? The loon with glasses?’ Or, ‘He tells terrible lies. He always has.’ Or, ‘No surprise: he had it coming to him after what he did to Maggie’s tractor.’

The events of small-town Scotland, seemingly so local and irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, were in fact ciphers for the life of all humanity. These marginalia, penned in a crabbit hand, had an irrefutable profundity to them: so many people did indeed tell terrible lies, always had – and always will. So many people, in all sorts of places, have it coming to them, and fuel the Schadenfreude of the rest of us, who are secretly relieved that it is they, rather than we, to whom what was coming came.

Matthew glanced at the newspaper in his hand. Big Lou’s relative had underlined a sentence in an article and written beside it, in blue ink: I kent his faither!

He looked at the subject of the article: Local man comes second in national competition. He smiled, and was seen by Big Lou as she poured her coffee grounds.

‘Something amusing you?’ asked Big Lou. She was sensitive about urban condescension in all its forms.

‘No,’ said Matthew. As he spoke, he imagined the unseen hand of an Arbroath body inscribing shaky letters in the air beside him: liar.

18. Ten Years with the Pygmies