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an end, and what his responsibilities are in Edinburgh. He is being assessed as much as he can be in an age which doesn’t allow for parental vetting and which insists that relationships will work best if no outside arbiters are awarded authority, for romantic unions should be the unique prerogative of the individuals concerned—excluding even those who may have, not so many years ago, given one of the pair her bath every evening and, on weekends, taken her to Bught Park in a pram to throw breadto the pigeons.
    Having no say does not mean, however, that Mrs. McLelland has no questions. She wonders if Rabih will prove to be a philanderer or a spendthrift, a weakling or a drunk, a bore or the sort to resolve an argument with a little force—and she is curious because she knows, better than most, that there is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
    When, on their last day together, Mrs. McLelland remarks to Rabih over lunch what a pity it is that Kirsten never sang another note after her father left home, because she had a particularly promising voice and a place in the treble section of the choir, she isn’t just sharing a detail of her daughter’s former extracurricular activities; she is—as much as the rules allow—asking Rabih not to ruin Kirsten’s life.
    They take the train back to Edinburgh the evening before New Year’s Eve, a four-hour ride across the Highlands in harness to an aging diesel. Kirsten, a veteran of the journey, has known to bring along a blanket, in which they wrap themselves in the empty rear carriage. Seen from distant farms, the train must look like an illuminated line, no larger than a millipede, making its way across a pane of blackness.
    Kirsten seems preoccupied.
    â€œNo, nothing at all,” she replies when he asks, but no sooner has she uttered her denial than a tear wells up, more rapidly followed by a second and a third. Still, it really is nothing, she stresses. She is being silly. A dunderhead. She doesn’t mean to embarrass him, all men hate this kind of thing, and she doesn’t plan to make it a habit. Most importantly, it has nothing to do with him. It is her mother. She is crying because, for the first time in her adult life, she feels properly happy—a happiness which her own mother, with whom she has an almost symbiotic connection, has so seldom known.Mrs. McLelland worries that Rabih might make her sad; Kirsten cries with guilt at how happy her lover has helped her to become.
    He holds her close to him. They don’t speak. They have known each other for a little over six months. It wasn’t his plan to bring this up now. But just past the village of Killiecrankie, after the ticket collector’s visit, Rabih turns to face Kirsten and asks, without preamble, if she will marry him—not necessarily right away, he adds, but whenever she feels it is right, and not necessarily with any fuss, either. It could be a tiny occasion—just them and her mother and a few friends—but of course it could be bigger too if that’s what she prefers; the key thing is that he loves her without reservation and wants, more than anything he’s ever wanted before, to be with her as long as he lives.
    She turns away and is, for a few moments, perfectly silent. She isn’t very good at these sorts of moments, she confesses, not that they often happen, or indeed ever. She doesn’t have a speech ready—this has come like a bolt from the blue—but how different it is from what ordinarily happens to her; how deeply kind and mad and courageous of him to come out with something like this now. And yet, despite her cynical character and her firm belief that she doesn’t care for these things—so long as he has truly understood what he wants and has noted what a monster she is—she can’t really see why she wouldn’t say, with all her heart and with immense fear and gratitude, yes, yes,