Alexander Mccall Smith

Over the days that followed, Bertie settled into his new routine. He still felt perplexed by the strangeness of everything, and, in particular, by his inability to understand anything that anybody said. But with the aid of his translation programme, he found that not only could he work out roughly what was going on but could also make himself understood. At school, his new friend Hughie, although by no means a substitute for Ranald Braveheart Macpherson – whose company Bertie missed keenly – was unfailingly helpful. Hughie made a point of explaining things to Bertie and was patient and solicitous when Bertie confessed to being perplexed.

After Irene’s declaration that she would go off to an Arctic research station with her new Norwegian friend, events moved quickly. Her next step was to call Stuart to tell him that it would no longer be possible for Bertie to say in Peterhead, and that he would be returning to Edinburgh the following day. As it happened, Irene explained, a neighbour and his wife would be driving his fish van down to Newhaven, and had agreed to take Bertie. They would make an early start, she said, and Bertie could be expected in Scotland Street shortly after ten. These neighbours, Bob and Brenda McGuffie, were responsible family people, she assured Stuart. Their own children, Wally and Molly, had befriended Bertie, and might come in the van too, to visit their grandmother, Nellie McGuffie, in Leith.

The McGuffie fish van with its legend From the Sea to your Tea made its way along Great King Street and into Drummond Place. From there it was but a short descent to the doorway of No 44 Scotland Street, in front of which it stopped. The driver’s door was then opened and Bob McGuffie stepped out. He walked round to the back of the vehicle, where he opened the rear door, to reveal Bertie and the two McGuffie children, Wally and Molly, sitting alongside a pile of fish boxes.

By arrangement with the Purse Bearer, Stuart dropped off Bertie and Ranald Braveheart Macpherson at the main gate of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. On the other side of the road stood the Scottish Parliament, beside which the High Street ran steadily up the spine of rock along which the Old Town of Edinburgh had been built. To the east was the bulk of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags, and to the north, beyond the rooftops of Jock’s Lodge, were the cold waters of the Firth of Forth and the North Sea. It was a townscape steeped in history, most of it turbulent; the setting of so many of the events that made up Scotland’s romantic past. Here John Knox stormed; here James the Sext endured his education at the hands of the cruel Buchanan; not far from here was Darnley blown high by duplicitous nobles; here Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonnie Prince of a thousand shortbread tins, held his fancy court before military defeat and exile overtook him.

While official Edinburgh conducted its colourful rituals around the Mercat Cross, on the other side of town, in her coffee bar on Dundas Street, Big Lou, loyal, stout-hearted, dispenser of coffee and bacon rolls to the people of the New Town and such visitors as wandered that way, sat with her new friend, the Singaporean scholar and essayist, Christopher Lin, and talked about the life of the poets of the Tang Dynasty.

Bruce’s extraordinary misfortune in being struck by lightning – again – while re-enacting the original incident for a television documentary, did not have any serious physical consequences. The doctors who examined him at the Royal Infirmary concluded that the main charge had passed him by, having gone to earth through a set of metal railings beside the road. This meant that although, technically, he was hit by the bolt, it was a glancing blow, rather than a full-on strike. The brief period of unconsciousness that followed was more a result of his striking his head on the ground when he was thrown over by the bolt. At the same time, Bruce was convinced that for a brief period his heart had stopped – perhaps from shock – and this was supported by the paramedics in the ambulance, who entered a note in their records to the effect that the patient did not appear to have a pulse when first picked up.

It was Domenica who suggested that she and Angus should have a dinner party. “We haven’t entertained for heaven knows how long,” she observed one morning as they sat at their breakfast table.

“So,” said Domenica’s friend, Dilly Emslie. “Has anything been happening?”

The guests arrived, none of them late, as an evening with Angus and Domenica was eagerly looked forward to by everyone who had received an invitation and even, somewhat wistfully, by those who had not. Domenica played the hostess, as she always did, with a real feeling for the needs of her guests: nobody was left out, nobody was stuck in a corner, unable to escape an earnest conversation that he or she might prefer, on balance, not to have. Domenica moved from room to room, topping up a glass here, offering a cheese biscuit there, ensuring that everybody was happy in their particular way.

The author of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency reveals his favourite books, including Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles — and a textbook on architecture