Lair. The word jolts me. “Um, sure.” Jamie’s accommodation is separate to the farmhouse, in a studio-style room above the garage, with its own entrance. I follow him up the concrete steps to his white door, wondering if this is where he took Carrie. It would be child’s play to smuggle her in, if they were inclined toward secrecy. Perhaps that thought has my brain expecting some kind of lurid sex cave, or perhaps his use of the word lair is to blame, but his room is notable for only two things: clinical tidiness and an enormous flat-screen television on one wall. Other than that, it’s exactly as uninspiring as one might expect for a white-walled rectangular space above a garage, even given the large windows at either end. There’s a double bed, and a sofa in front of the telly, and a cube blocked off in one corner that presumably houses a bathroom.

“This is nice,” I say, out of social convention. Then, looking for something more personal to add, I nod toward the telly. “I bet Callum loves that.”

“Oh, he never comes up here,” Jamie says easily, from the sofa. “This is my space.”

“Oh. Right. Do you work from here?”

“Aye, over there.” He points toward the desk, where a sleek black computer sits watchfully, with nothing but a keyboard on the desk. Either he has tidied up relentlessly in advance of showing me his space, or he and Carrie have absolutely no future together—a man this fastidious couldn’t ever live in Carrie’s chaos. I want to ask him about it—we have a friendship, Jamie and I, that’s independent of Carrie or Fiona, but we haven’t discussed our love lives. I suspect he’s just as private as I am on that score, and why shouldn’t he be? What he does with Carrie or anyone else is his business. “I cannae really risk Callum messing around with that, you see. That’s why I keep him out of here.”

“I see.” There’s only one picture on the wall, just a small framed photograph. I wander to look at it. “How is it living right by your dad and sister? After all, you could probably day-trade from anywhere.” The photograph is in color, of a very thin woman in her thirties with cascading chestnut curls, Farrah Fawcett style, sitting cross-legged in a garden. It’s a product of exactly the same early 1980s photography that’s in my mum’s albums.

“I could; you’re right. And it has its moments . . .” He grimaces a touch ruefully. “But I willnae be here forever.” I glance at him again, but he’s not looking at me; he’s looking away, with the same air of suppressed excitement that I picked up earlier. Whatever those plans are, he’s not ready to share them.