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abiding vice – at least until his apparent reform – had been vanity. He was undoubtedly extremely handsome – so good-looking, in fact, that female heads regularly turned when he entered the room or walked along the street. The reason for the turning of heads was obvious enough: any woman seeing Bruce felt an immediate, puzzling, and sometimes frankly alarming desire to stroke him. Few acted on this, even if on occasion one or two more temporarily disinhibited women got close to doing so, reaching out before being brought to their senses and controlling themselves. Had they carried through with their impulse, Bruce would not have minded; in fact, he regarded such attentions as no more than his due. ‘I suppose I’m just destined to give women pleasure,’ he had once remarked to a male friend while they had been sitting over a drink in the Canny Man’s. ‘See her,’ he went on, nodding in the direction of a woman sitting on the opposite side of the room. ‘I reckon she fancies me.’ The friend had glanced across the room and saw, with dismay, that the young woman in question was throwing Bruce a look of only lightly disguised longing. Notice me, the look said.
    The friend had gritted his teeth, and at that moment had decided that he hated Bruce. And yet they would remain friends, in the way in which people do with those whom they find themselves allocated by chance. Everybody has friends they dislike; people they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.
    But that was the old Bruce; the Bruce before the moment of insight in Leith changed him so profoundly. Now he could lookback on his old life, at its various stages, and it seemed to him that he was looking at the history of another person altogether.
    Bruce had lived in Scotland Street, then in London, then back in Edinburgh, although not in Scotland Street. On his return he had moved in first with Julia, to whom he had been engaged for a short time, and then he had gone to live in Leith with George McNair, the freelance photographer and advocate of moral renewal. George had both photographed and renewed Bruce, who had then taken up with Lizzie Todd, daughter of Raeburn Todd, the well-known Edinburgh surveyor and Watsonian-Rotarian. This had led to another engagement, announced in the
Scotsman
in that time-honoured and rather embarrassing fashion as being a cause of pleasure to both families. Often both families are not delighted; indeed not even pleased. In this case, though, both families were happy enough with the engagement, but not quite in equal measure. Bruce’s parents were immensely relieved that their son was re-engaged, and heartily approved of Lizzie. By contrast, Raeburn Todd, although prepared to forgive Bruce his previous indiscretions, was secretly disappointed that his daughter had not set her sights somewhat higher. But he did not show that, although he was careful to avoid giving Bruce – or Lizzie – the impression that a partnership in the firm was in the offing.
    The thought had occurred to him – more than once – that Bruce might have asked Lizzie to marry him for reasons other than love and affection. The Todds were not conspicuously wealthy, but they were comfortably off, and their firm had done reasonably well. If Bruce became a partner, then he would probably make about three times what he could expect to make as an employee, a fact of which he was surely fully aware. And there was also the question of the legacy left Lizzie by her maternal grandmother, which consisted of a portfolio of shares and, more significantly, a flat in Morningside. Put together, this all amounted to a fairly attractive package for a young man who, as far as Todd could tell, had no assets whatsoever.
    He had raised the matter with Lizzie as delicately as he could. ‘Bruce is very fond of you, isn’t he?’
    ‘Of course he is. He asked me to marry him, didn’t he?’
    Todd