No, girls could be manipulative and every bit as trying as boys. Girls kept arguments going and loved using psychological warfare to achieve their aims; boys might be pugilistic at times, but they did not bear grudges to the same extent as girls. So three girls, while not as physically demanding as three boys, could be even more psychologically exhausting. She sighed, and, as the taxi reached Surgeons’ Hall, began to cry.

The taxi driver looked in his mirror. He was a driver of the old school – part social worker, part psychologist, witness and confidant to a thousand secrets.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes.’

Having picked her up at the Infirmary, he knew.

‘Are you going to live?’ It was a risky question; the answer might well have been no.

‘Yes, I’m going to live.’

‘So it’s not that bad, is it, hen?’

He looked again in the mirror and winked. He was right. Of course it was not that bad.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not. It’s just that … just that I’m going to have triplets.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Oh, michty!’ he said. ‘I was wrong. It is bad!’

34. Carnoustie Shortbread

Elspeth decided that rather than going home to the flat she would go straight to the gallery and break the news to Matthew there. The taxi driver had been kind, as most Edinburgh taxi drivers were, and her tears had stopped by the time they reached Queen Street. As a result of this, when Elspeth spotted Big Lou’s café coming up on the right, she asked the driver to stop and let her off there. Several hours had passed now since her modest breakfast, and she thought that she might have a large, creamy cup of latte accompanied by a piece of Big Lou’s shortbread. That shortbread, which Big Lou made according to the recipe of her aunt from Carnoustie, was renowned for its calorific punch and its contribution, small but significant, to heart disease in the east of Scotland. But Elspeth said to herself, as she contemplated the shortbread ahead of her, I’m eating for two. No, three; no, four …