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with a good figure that was starting to go and small lines around her eyes that crinkled as she smiled but threatened to become deep ravines within a few years. But she was bright and warm and fun despite being ten years older than I needed so I stayed for an hour and left her flat feeling a lot better than when I'd arrived. I'd paid her fifty pounds in advance, but as I went I gave her another ten pounds and I couldn't help smiling and nodding when she asked if she'd see me again. I was getting soft, but then I hadn't been too hard to start with. I decided to go up to Pitlochry to see David.
    Shona picked me up at Edinburgh Airport and drove me the seventy miles to Shankland Hall in her Rover, or rather our Rover as it was leased to our company, Scottish Corporate Advisors. Shona and I had met at St Andrew's University, but while I cut my financial teeth in my uncle's merchant bank after getting a lower second-class degree, she pocketed a first with no trouble at all and went off to work for the stockbrokers Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh in their research department, specialising in the retail sector, followed by a spell examining the inner workings of the giltedged market. When I decided to set up on my own she leapt at the chance of joining me. I was lucky to get her and now we were partners, equal partners.
    As she settled back in the driving seat of the Rover she looked more like an aerobics instructor in one of the plusher dance studios, bright pink track-quit, white tennis shoes and her long dark hair tied back in a pony tail with a pink ribbon. She looked about seventeen. But put her in a dark two-piece suit and she'd more than hold her own in any boardroom, big brown bedroom eyes or not. One very, very clever lady and she wasn't spoiled one iota by the fact that she knew it. I just wished she wouldn't keep teasing me about her superior degree, but that was a small price to pay.
    She powered us past a removals lorry before turning and asking, 'How's the Big Smoke?'
    'Big,' I said. 'And smokey. How's business?'
    'How do you think? You've been away for almost a month and the cracks are starting to show.'
    'You're a big girl, you can handle it.' She could, too, and the little girl lost act wasn't fooling anyone. She relished the 40 opportunity of showing what she could do on her own.
    'Do you want a rundown on what's happening?' she asked.
    'No, Shona, not just now. Later.'
    'Damn you, when are you coming back to work?'
    I rested my hand on her knee but she jerked it away angrily. 'Soon,' I said. 'I only need a few more weeks, maybe a month.'
    'It's been almost three months and that's time enough for grieving. Getting back into harness would be the best thing for you.'
    'Yes, doctor.'
    'I mean it.'
    'I know you do. I'll be back soon, I promise. How's David?'
    'Missing you. Wants to know when he can live with you again. He keeps asking if you're dead, too. Don't leave him there too long - he panics. So do I.' Then she smiled to herself and pressed the accelerator hard to the floor. Little girl lost, indeed.
    'They're looking after him all right?'
    'Of course they are,' she replied with a toss of her pony tail. 'They're professionals, and the sort of money you're paying reflects that. The food's better than I'm getting. I'm thinking of taking a few of our clients there instead of to the North British. The service is probably better, too.'
    She spent the rest of the drive filling me in on business, whether or not I wanted to hear: I had other things on my mind but I listened with half an ear, nodded when she asked if I agreed with the way she was handling things and offered her a few words of advice. She was doing fine.
    We pulled into the "ravelled drive which curved in front of the grey stone building that was Shankland Hall only two hours after I'd landed at Edinburgh. Originally built as the private residence of a wealthy tobacco baron who decided to devote his retirement to the pursuit of country pastimes,
    - 41 it had