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wouldn’t have approved at all of this kind of flamboyant opulence. He’d absorbed half a millennium of an inbred Scottish-aristocratic distrust of luxury. The small stone castle had been comfortless and, disappointingly after the one hot day of their hasty wedding, freezing even in August, and Heather had soon learned not to bother mentioning the dank mist that lurked below over the lake and shimmied in through the stone wall. That kind of complaining had been simply incomprehensible to him. Sometimes the air was so damp, she’d wondered which way round it really was, whether the mist
was
actually coming in, or if it started way down inside the castle and seeped out over the land. How she’d shivered in her tiny, thigh-chilling dresses and skimpy, skinny little tops. The only room with any real warmth had been Iain’s study, book-lined, tobacco-tinged and leathery like an ancient headmaster’s den. A sooty fire was lit there every day by the doting Mrs Kirby, and Heather remembered tingling with embarrassment that a grown man not that far off thirty could still shamelessly call someone ‘Nanny’.
    â€˜Not in here, Heather-Feather,’ Iain had told her with babying firmness, when she’d crept into the study to get warm. ‘This is the boy’s room, for the boy’s work.’ His tiny red Olivetti Valentine typewriter, perched on the paper-strewn desk, had looked too like a toy for her to take seriously as the source of his work. Somehow she’d imagined his novels full of murderous horror (books for men, of course) came from a much more industrial origin than this cosy room and the pretty little machine. By now, judging by his major successes she occasionally read about, and could see for herself on any bookstall, he was probably well into the latest state-of-the art Apple Macintosh byte-blaster, and had become the sort of man who sat zapping out a couple of chapters on a Powerbook while waiting for the Edinburgh Shuttle. She took a long, luxurious sip of her drink and thanked Margot’s statue gods for the sinless warmth of the Thames Valley.
    â€˜He’s been expelled,’ Margot told Heather, jerking her head to where Simon was disappearing into the orchard. ‘Can you believe it, on the last day of term? Drinking in the dorm or whatever they sleep in. Good God, who
doesn’t
drink after their exams? I bet the teachers do. Boarding schools, I ask you, they’re on another planet.’ Margot lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Bet you anything we get a letter, come September, saying something like,’ she pursed up her lips and put on a mock-snooty voice, ‘“On further consideration we have decided to overlook, on this occasion . . .” etcetera. That’s because they’ll be wanting his sixth-form’s worth of money out of us.’ She stubbed the barely smoked cigarette out vigorously. ‘Well they’re not bloody getting it. He can go to the college with your Kate.’ She chuckled knowingly and added, ‘I’ve got a feeling he won’t mind that at all. Another drink?’
    â€˜In a sec, when I’ve eaten all this fruit. Do you think the alcohol gets absorbed into it like a sponge?’ Heather picked out a dripping slice of orange and chewed at it. ‘It always tastes so deliciously over-strength. Tell me about the film. Is it a sort of historical drama? Is that why they need this kind of house?’
    Margot thought for a minute. ‘Not really, I gather they just wanted it because it’s
big
, to be honest, the sort of place that could be an important embassy in the middle of a London park. It’s a spooky spy thing I think, lots of dead blondes and Middle Eastern intrigue.’
    â€˜Not our sort of thing, really then. No laughs, no posh frocks, no witty repartee,’ Heather said, laughing. ‘More of a boy’s film.’ Even as she said the words, Iain, his