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the cabinet. When she handed his drink to Toby he raised it to her and gave the Gaelic toast.
    “Slaint,”
said Toby.
    Isabel raised her glass weakly.
Slaint,
she was sure, would be Toby’s only word of Gaelic, and she did not like the peppering of one language with words from others;
pas du tout.
So she muttered, under her breath,
“Brindisi.”
    “Brin
what?” asked Toby.
    “Brindisi,”
said Isabel. “The Italian toast.”
    Cat glanced at her. She hoped that Isabel would not be mischievous: she was perfectly capable of winding Toby up.
    “Isabel speaks quite good Italian,” Cat said.
    “Useful,” said Toby. “I’m no good at languages. A few words of French, I suppose, left over from school, and a bit of German. But nothing else.”
    Toby reached for a piece of brown bread and smoked salmon. “I can’t resist this stuff,” he said. “Cat gets it from somebody over in Argyll. Archie somebody, isn’t it, Cat?”
    “Archie MacKinnon,” said Cat. “He smokes it himself in his garden, in one of those old smoking sheds. He soaks it in rum and then puts it over oak chips. It’s the rum that gives it that wonderful flavour.”
    Toby reached for another of the largest pieces.
    Cat quickly picked up the plate and offered it to Isabel. “I go up and see Archie when I go to Campbelltown,” she said, placing the plate at Isabel’s side. “Archie is a wonderful old man. Eighty-something, but still going out in his boat. He has two dogs, Max and Morris.”
    “After the boys?” said Isabel.
    “Yes,” said Cat.
    Toby looked at the salmon. “What boys?”
    “Max and Morris,” said Isabel. “Two German boys. The very first comic-book characters. They got up to all sorts of mischief and were eventually chopped into pieces by a baker and made into biscuits.”
    She looked at Toby. Max and Morris had fallen into the baker’s flour vat and had been put into a mixing machine. The biscuits into which they had been made were eventually eaten byducks. Such a Germanic idea, she thought; and for a moment she imagined that this might happen to Toby, tumbling into such a machine and being made into biscuits.
    “You’re smiling,” said Cat.
    “Not intentionally,” said Isabel hurriedly. Did one ever mean to smile?
    They talked for half an hour or so before the meal. Toby had been skiing with a group of friends and he talked about his off-piste adventures. There had been an awkward moment when they had caused a halfhearted avalanche, but they had managed to get out of trouble.
    “A rather close thing,” he said. “You know what an avalanche sounds like?”
    “Surf?” suggested Isabel.
    Toby shook his head. “Thunder,” he said. “Just like thunder. And it gets louder and louder.”
    Isabel imagined the scene—Toby in a strawberry-coloured ski suit with a tidal wave of snow hurtling down towards him, and the sun on the white peaks of the mountains. And then, just for a moment, she saw the snow overtake him and cover his flailing limbs in a churning of white, and then stillness, and there would be nothing but the tip of a ski pole to mark the spot. No, that was an unworthy thought, every bit as bad as imagining him being made into biscuits, and she put it out of her mind. But why had Cat not gone? She enjoyed skiing, but perhaps Toby had not invited her.
    “You didn’t want to go, Cat?” she asked. It was a potentially awkward question, but there was something in the self-assuredness of this young man that made her feel mischievous.
    Cat sighed. “The shop,” she said. “I can’t get away. I’d have loved to have gone. But I just couldn’t.”
    “What about Eddie?” said Toby. “Surely he’s old enough to look after things for a week or so. Can’t you trust him?”
    “Of course I can trust him,” Cat retorted. “It’s just that Eddie is a bit … vulnerable.”
    Toby looked sideways at her. He was sitting beside Cat on the sofa near the window and Isabel thought that she detected an