young woman bounced out of the French windows that gave on to the croquet lawn. She had a big, shapeless bosom beneath a baggy, bright jumper covered in blue stars and dry blonde hair held off her face with an Alice band. Her cheeks were flaky with what looked like mild eczema and she had a waning cold sore at the side of her mouth. But her smile was warm and genuine.
‘Lorimer Black, I presume,’ she said, shaking his hand in orthodox manner. ‘I’m Jennifer – Binnie.’
There was a full-throated roar of disappointment from behind as Torquil missed a sitter. ‘Fuckfuck FUCK!’
‘Boys,’ Jennifer-Binnie called. ‘Neighbours, remember? And language, please.’ She turned back to Lorimer. ‘Your girlfriend’s just called from the station. Do you want me to collect her?’
‘Sorry? Who?’
Before Lorimer could ask further, Torquil was by his side, a hand squeezing his shoulder.
‘We’ll pick her up,’ he said. ‘Come along, Lorimer.’
As they drove to High Barnet in Torquil’s car Torquil apologized. He seemed excited, Lorimer thought, coiled and tense with a kind of manic energy.
‘I should have checked first, I suppose,’ he said, uncon-vincingly. ‘I had no time to clear things with you. Thought we’d be able to busk it. I told Binnie you’d only just started going out.’ He grinned, salaciously. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be sleeping together.’
‘And just who is my girlfriend this weekend?’
‘Irina. The Russian bint. You remember?’
‘The sad one.’ Lorimer frowned.
‘I couldn’t ask her on her own, could I? What would Binnie think?’ He patted Lorimer’s knee. ‘Don’t worry, I only got the idea yesterday. I didn’t have you lined up as chaperon all along.’
‘Fine.’ Lorimer wasn’t so sure about this. But it explained Torquil’s unnatural glee.
‘She seemed a bit lonely, you know. Friendless. I thought this would cheer her up. But obviously I had to come up with something more persuasive for the Binns.’
‘Obviously’
‘Oh, and I should apologize that the dinner’s black tie. One of Binnie’s little fads.’
‘No problem.’
‘And I apologize for the house too, while I’m in contrite mood.’
‘Why?’
‘You see, it was left to Binnie by an uncle of hers, a distant uncle.’ He stopped talking and looked at Lorimer with an expression close to shock. ‘You don’t seriously think I’d choose to live in Barnet, do you? As soon as the market recovers I’m flogging it.’
He pulled up outside High Barnet tube station and they saw Irina waiting alone at the bus stop, wearing a duffle coat and carrying a red nylon backpack. Lorimer sat and watched Torquil go to greet her, kiss her on each cheek and talk urgently for a few minutes, Irina nodding wordlessly at his instructions, before he led her back to the car.
‘You remember Lorimer, don’t you?’ Torquil said, smiling benignly as Irina climbed into the back seat.
‘I think you were in restaurant,’ she said, anxiously.
‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘That’s me. Good to see you again.’
Lorimer buckled on the sporran and checked its positioning over his groin in the full-length mirror. He was pleased to be wearing a kilt again after so many years and surprised, as he always was, by the transformation it wrought on him – he almost didn’t recognize himself. He squared his shoulders, contemplating his reflection: the short black jacket with its silver buttons, the dark green of the tartan (Hunting Stewart, there was no Black Watch at the dress-hire agency), the knee-length white socks and their gartering of laces, criss-crossed above his ankles. This was, to his mind, as close to the Platonic ‘Lorimer Black’ as he had ever desired, as complete a metamorphosis as he could ever have wished for. His pleasure in his appearance momentarily dispelled the depression that was gathering within him at the prospect of the evening ahead.
He was sleeping in a room at the end of a long L-shaped corridor on the house’s second floor, under the eaves, a big atticy room with two dormer windows and with clearly unnecessary beam work supporting the ceiling but designed to foster an impression of antiquity. Torquil had apologized for the beams and for the half-timbering outside, for the brass sconces in the passageways and for the plum-coloured bathroom suite and the bidet when he had shown Lorimer his room. He continued to blame everything on the execrable taste of Binnie’s distant uncle (‘Nouveau riche, lived in Rhodesia half his life’), taking no responsibility at all for the appearance of his own home. Lorimer paced back from the mirror and turned sharply on his heel, admiring the perfect way the pleats of