‘Maybe. But I don’t think we’ve met. I really don’t. I’ve heard about you, of course. When you and Lizzie got engaged. I was working down in London then and that’s why we didn’t meet.’

‘I see,’ said Bruce. ‘London. I worked there for a while. I got a bit bored and came home. Give me Edinburgh any day. London – everything’s stale and used up. Even the air has been breathed twenty times before by somebody else. All sorts of people.’

‘But you could say that about the air anywhere, surely,’ she said. ‘Aren’t all the world’s molecules mixed up? I remember reading somewhere that there are fragments of Julius Caesar in every bit of dust.’

‘Julius Caesar?’

‘Yes. We breathe in tiny bits of him – and everybody else – when we fill our lungs.’

Bruce laughed. ‘He gets about.’

Diane was silent for a moment. They were walking rather faster than the others, and she looked back towards them. ‘Poor Lizzie,’ she said. ‘I was worried that she wouldn’t be able to concentrate this evening.’

Bruce frowned. ‘Why? Something’s wrong?’

Diane looked over her shoulder again. ‘I’m not sure whether I should be telling you this. Lizzie said that she didn’t want you to know about it – she doesn’t want you to worry.’

Bruce raised an eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t want me to worry? Worry about what?’

Diane hesitated, as if uncertain whether or not to continue. Then she said, ‘You won’t tell her I told you? Promise?’

Bruce nodded. ‘Yes. I promise.’ He paused. ‘Is there something wrong with her?’

Diane shook her head. ‘No, there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s not ill. It’s just that …’

‘Go on,’ Bruce encouraged her.

‘It’s just that Lizzie has had a really horrid bit of news. She knows that it’s not the end of the world, but it’s still pretty hard to take.’

‘Her job?’ prompted Bruce.

‘No. But yes, it’s to do with money. Yes. She used to have quite a bit, you know. But her father’s had a bit of a financial disaster. Something to do with insurance – he signed up as a name, whatever that means.’

‘I know what that means,’ said Bruce. So Todd was a name. Disaster.

‘Anyway, her dad’s lost a serious amount of money,’ Diane continued. ‘Big time. Lizzie said that she had to give everything back to him – she had some money, and a flat from her grandmother. But if she didn’t hand it over to her dad, then he stood to lose their house. The lot. She felt she had no choice.’

Bruce listened in silence. They were now passing the university union and a group of students had spilled out onto the square outside. Nineteen, thought Bruce inconsequentially. To be nineteen again, instead of twenty-something and getting this bad, bad news.

‘Better to know,’ he muttered.