They shake hands at the construction site on an overcast morning in early june, a little after eleven. Kirsten McLellan is wearing a fluorescent jaket, a hard hat and a pair of heavy rubber-soled boots. Ribah khan can't hear anything much of what she is saying - not only because of the repetitive shudder of a nerby hydraulic compressor, but also becausem, as he will come to discover, kirsten often talks rather softly, in the voice of her native inverness that has a habit of trailing off before sentences are entirely complete, as though she has halfway through doscovered some objection to what she has been saying or has simply moved on to other prorites.

Despite her apparel ( or in truth partly because of it), Ribah at once notes in Kirston a range of traits, phychological and physical, to whose appeal he is susecptible. He observes her unruffled, amused way or responding to the patronizing attitudes of the muscular twelve man construction crew; the deligence with which she checks off the vairous items on the schedule; her confiident disregard for the norms of fashion and the individuality implied by the slight irregularity in her upper front teeth.

Once the meeting with the crew is finished, client and contractor go and sit together on a nerby bench to sort through the contracts. but within a few minutes it begins to pour and, as there is no room to do paperwork in the site office, Kirsten suggests they walk to the high street and find a cafe.

On the way there, beneath her umbrella, they fail into a conversation about hiking. Kirsten tells Rabih that she tries to get away from the city as often as possible. Not long ago, in fact, she went up to Loch Carraigean, where, pitching her tent in an isolated pine forest, she felt an extraordinary sense of peace and perspective in being so for away from other people and all the distractions and frenzy of urban life. Yes she was up there on her own, she answers; he has an image of her under canvas, unlacing her boots. When they reach the high street, there no cafe in sight, so they take refuge instead in the Taj Mahal, a sombre and deserted indian restaurant where they order tea and (at the owner's urging) a plate of poppdoms. Fortified, the make their way through the forms, concluding that it will be best to call in the cement mixer only in the third week and have the paying stones delivered the week after.

Rabih examines Kirsten freckles across her cheeks, a curious mixture of assertiveness and reserver in her expression; thick shoulder - lenght auburn hair pushed to one side; and a habid of beginning sentences with a brisk here's a thing...

In the midst of this practical conversation, he mangers nonethe-less to catch the occasional glimps o a more private side. To his question about her parents, Kirsten answer, with a note of awk-wardness in her voice. that she was brought up in inverness by her mother alone, he father having lost interest in family life early on It wasn't an idea start to make me hopeful about people; she says with a wry smile (he realizes it's the left upper front tooth that is at a bit of an angle). Maybe that's why the thought of happily ever after has never really been my thing

The remark is hardly off putting for Rabih , who reminds himself of the maxim that xynics are merely idealists with unusually higgh standards.

Read Part 5