‘I used to come into your shop,’ Sandy said. ‘When Mima brought me to town for the day. I’d choose a bag of sweeties to take back on the bus.’

She looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was in the room. ‘All the bairns came in for their sweeties.’

Then Louisa came back in again with a tea tray and slices of cake. She put a napkin over her mother’s lap and cut the cake into small pieces so that she could eat it easily. Mavis ate a few squares and then seemed to drift off to sleep.

‘So what questions do you have for me, Sandy?’ Louisa seemed to have recovered her composure. She was sitting on the floor by her mother’s side, her mug and plate on a small coffee table within easy reach.

‘How do you cope with this?’ He nodded towards the elderly woman. ‘The stress of it. Every day.’

‘We get on very well usually. Mother’s in fine form today. Mischievous. As you noticed.’

‘But with your work too. And all on your own. At school and here.’ Sandy couldn’t imagine what that could be like. Turning up to work every day and not finding colleagues and friends to chat with.

For a moment she didn’t answer. ‘It’s easier than being in Edinburgh and worrying all the time about what was going on here.’ Another pause. ‘And I owe her, Sandy. Big-style.’ She looked out of the window and he thought she was out of practice at making conversation with grown-ups. Then he realized that she intended to confide in him. ‘I was adopted. Mum and Dad were middle-aged when they took me on. Not because they were desperate for a child. I don’t think Mum was ever especially maternal. But because they heard about me through the kirk – about my mother being in a bad way in Aberdeen and not being able to care for me. And they took me into their home and loved me as if I were their own.’

‘They wouldn’t expect anything in return,’ Sandy said.

‘Of course they wouldn’t, but it’s a small way that I can pay them back for their love and their kindness. Do you see that?’

He nodded, but thought he’d never be able to give up his life for an old woman who hardly seemed to notice he was there. He’d end up resenting the demands she placed on him.

‘So are you going to ask me those questions, Sandy?’ Her voice was slightly impatient and he thought she was already regretting giving so much of herself away. When they were at school together she had never let on that she was adopted, even when the lads made fun of her older parents and the way they ran the shop.