But by the time they were in the taxi on the way to the airport, travelling through the well-set neatness of Corstorphine, past the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s zoo, they had forgotten about their minor tiff over the secrecy of their destination. And the night had brought self-forgiveness too, and reassurance that marriage would be an arrangement of delight and enhancement, not one of doubts and quibbles.

Matthew, who like many young men imagined that he could never be loved, not for himself, now at last thought: I have found the one person on this earth, the one, who loves me. And Elspeth did love him, and had proved it by drawing a heart in lipstick on his stomach, with their initials intertwined – that most simple, clichéd declaration that the love-struck have always resorted to; carved on tree trunks with pen-knives; traced in the dust on the back of unwashed cars; furtively scribbled on walls in pencil; and which, for all its simplicity and indeed its naiveté, is usually nothing but believed-in and sincere.