They take the train to inverness to visit Kirsten' mother She insists on coming to meet them at the station, though it means a bus journey from the spposite side of twon. She calls Kirsten her Lambie and hugs her tightly on the platform, her eyes closed achingly. She extends a hand formally to Rabih and apologizes for the conditions at this time of years: it is two thirty in the afternoon and already nearly dark. She has the same vivacious eyes as her daughter, though hers have an additional, unflinching quality that causes him to feel rater uncomfortable when they settle on him-as they are to do repeatedly, and wihtout apparent occasion, during their stay.

Home is a narrow, two-storey, grey terraced house located dirctly opposites that primary school where Kirsten's mother has been reaching opposites the primary school where Kirsten's mother has been teaching for three decades. All around invrness there are grown-ups-now running shops, drafting contracts and drawing bloog samples - who can remember their introduction to basic arithmetic and the Bible stories at Mrs mcLelland's knee. More specifically, most recall her distinctive way of letting them know not only how much she liked them but also how easily they might disppoint her.

Three of them eat supper together in the living room while whatching a quiz show on TV. Drawings that Kirsten made in nusery school march up the wall along the staircase in neat gilt frames in the hall there is a photography of her baptism; in the kitchen, a portrait of her in her school uniform, sensible-looking and gap-toothed at age seven; and on the bookshelf, a snapshot from when she was eleven, bone-thin, tousled and intrepid in shorts and a T-shirt at the beach.

In her bedroom, more or less untouched since she went to aber-deen to take a degree in law and accountancy, there are black clothes in the wardrobe and shelves packed with creased shcool paperbacks. insisde the penguin edition of Mansfield Park, and ado-lescent version of Kirsten has written, Fanny Price: the virtue of the exceptional ordinary' A photo album under the bed offers up a candid shot of her with her father, standing in front of an ice cream van at Cruden Bay. She is six and will have him in her life for one more year.

Family folklore has it that Kirsten's father upped and left one monring, having packed a small suitcase while his wife of then years was off teaching. The sole explanation he provided was a slip of paper on the hallway table with Sorry scrawled on it. Thereafter he drifted around scotland, taking up odd jobs on farms, keeping in touch with Kirsten only through an annual card an a gift on her birthday. When she turned twelve, a package arrived containing a cadigan fit for a nince year-old. Kirsten sent ti to back to an address in cammachmore, along with a note advising the sender of her frank hope that he would die soon. There has been no word from him since.

Had he left for another woman, he would merely have betrayaed his wedding vows. But to leave his wife and child simply to be by himself, to have more of his own company, without ever furnishing a satisfactory account of his motives - this was rejection of an altogether deeper, more abstract and more devastating nature.

Coming Soon PART 10