The two women edged through the door, seeking refuge from the sudden downpour, to find that they had been washed up in a less-than-impressive tea-room off Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Caroline surveyed the scene with some doubt and, behind her, Ellie was struggling with a share of the shopping bags, squealing as she tried to get in.

They commandeered a table with salt, pepper and drab artificial flowers, but when rain is rattling against humid window-panes, any table feels like a haven in distress, and soon they were encamped with bags all around them, ready to weather the storm.

'Nice choice, Caroline.'

Ellie Botwood grinned widely, her face almost shining, a light in her eyes, and wet through.

'It'll have to bloody well do.' Her friend helped her feel philosophical. It was always good meeting with Ellie. 'At least we've had a hell of a shopping spree.'

'I can't believe you buying that outfit' said Ellie, who was herself not only a spontaneous shopper but seemed to live her whole life on impulse. She still looked the part of a school-girl at forty and seemed to live life in a daze, straying passively on from one crash to another, wide-eyed and trusting, or flippant and cynical by turns.

Yet Caroline could always rely on her.

Some weeks had passed by since the children came home, and it was more than time to link up with Ellie and catch up on news.

She was flicking her finger hopefully to attract the attention of a teenage waitress. A granite-faced woman on the table next to them glared, then opened a huge, plastic-lipped mouth and consumed an artificial-looking éclair. The cream caught on her scowling cheeks and claw-like fingers. Caroline didn't feel hungry.

A long-haired youth (whose appearance was unselfconsciously exotic) came in and sat down quietly at the table opposite. The waitress, already beyond romance though still in her teens, stood aloof from Ellie's light chatter and humour. The place was charmless.

'Where have you been working since I last saw you?' Caroline asked. Her friend was an archaeologist by chance, and a whim at the age of twenty; though in fact, from the debris of her first marriage, she was wealthy enough not to work.

'Been working on a stone-circle. South of Oban on the road to Kintyre. Fun!' The man opposite glanced up from his book.

'What were they for?' Caroline asked. 'Human sacrifices?'

'Why : know someone you'd like to sacrifice?'

'Possibly,' she smiled seriously.

'No, more like some kind of calendar. The rhythm and cycle of moons and seasons. Seemed more important in those days, I suppose.'

'Where do you stay when you're there?'

'With a friend called Jean at Kilmartin. Used to run the village hotel. Drinks like a fish. What she doesn't know about whisky isn't worth asking about. She's a hoot!' The dreamer opposite had returned to his book. It was called 'Labyrinths'. And written by Borges of course.

'Just up the road from Dunadd' she continued.

'The crowning place of the early Celts' Caroline added.

Ellie looked wide-eyed across with a grin.

'You know it?'

'Visited it once in a snowstorm. Why on earth did they choose Dunadd for their kings?'

Ellie was enthusing.

'The Celts had a concept of kingship as a contract, I believe. The King was betrothed to the Land. His position, his crowning wasn't to do with his own power. It was the Goddess of the Land who owned and bestowed sovereignty.'

'So the Celts were like early feminists? Power rested with the goddess and her female counterparts?'

'Not exactly : I think it was more a question of balance. Like a marriage. It was essential for the King and the Land to remain in harmony, in touch. I suppose Dunadd was just the place where he came to get back in touch. I mean, that's what rites do isn't it? Get us back in touch with...' She was spreading her fingers before her friend's face... 'something deep inside us.'

But Caroline had stopped listening. A look of appalling surprise had stolen over her face.

'There's a mouse!' she whispered in disgust. 'A bloody mouse under those tables!'

The mouse dutifully appeared for Ellie, and scuttled cheerfully along the wall by the table opposite. The dreaming reader had noticed nothing.

'Let's get out of here!' pleaded Caroline, but Ellie was in paroxysms, squeaking and collapsing. Her brilliant, bright mind had made the leap from myth to mouse and she was killing herself, a human-sacrifice before the altar of her own mirth.

Caroline tried to temper the situation.

'You should meet Philip Gordon. He's a history graduate. You'd get on well.'

'Woah! Is he hunky? I do like my men to have a bit of... hunk.' Ellie was impossible in moods like this.

'Not exactly. But he's a good class of person, and bloody good with the kids.'

'That should suit me, I suppose?'

'That's not what I meant.'

'Does he like mice?'

The waitress fetched their order, unimpressed by Ellie's request for a cat, and crossed to do battle with the young man, who was not at all hunky, but unselfconsciously polite.

'May I have some peppermint tea?' he asked in a pleasant American accent.

'We only do ordinary tea.'

'Then I'll have some of that, thank you.'

'We don't do just tea.'

'I'm sorry?'

'We don't just serve tea on its own.'

'But that's all that I want thank you.'

'You have to have something else with it.'

'I do?' He seemed confused, but not troubled. After some thought he asked, 'What's the cheapest thing you've got?'

'Cheese sandwich, one pound thirty,' she said impatiently.

'I'll have a cheese sandwich.' She turned to go back to the kitchen. 'And ordinary tea. A pot of ordinary tea.'

In another world he might have slain dragons to win her fair hand.

Caroline fingered the pottery cups with disdain, and re-arranged the table. 'They're always playing down by the river, the kids. And Philip keeps a good eye.'

Ellie was assaulting a pastry.

'They've got this thing about Bonnie Prince Charlie's adventures.'

'Forbes' Ellie offered, with a mouthful.

Caroline looked.

'Best historical source : Bishop Forbes of Inverness. Tell Gordon to take a good look.'

'But what is it that gets people so interested in him? He didn't achieve anything?'

'Romance, my dear' Ellie suggested, wiping her fingers. 'I mean, most of our lives is a fudge, and eventually practical needs take over, and then that's it, finished!' Caroline shrugged. She continued.

'But the point was, he was not yet a king - unmarried, fighting to get his father crowned. He was free from practical constraints. He could hazard some romance, even drink himself blotto. I mean what the shit was he playing at?' She kissed her finger and wiped it across her friend's lips.

'It was romance : that's why they love him.'

The waitress returned ruefully, with a sandwich and tea, but no cat. The American smiled.

'Thank you so much for the tea. You can take the cheese sandwich away.'

'But it's yours.'

'I don't want it.'

'You have to. It comes with the tea.'

'Don't you see?' Ellie added. 'With all the odds stacked up against him, he challenged the whole system from the margins. You do realise when he travelled from France, and made his first landfall on the Island of Eriskay, he had no means of taking them on, no army - just romance and...' she was so attractive when her eyes sparkled... 'hope!'

Caroline loved to listen when Ellie was shining like this. It reminded her of a time when her own life sparkled as well.

'Just imagine : in August 1745, when he unfurled his standard on the shores of Loch Shiel at Glenfinnan, everything hinging on one man's rash dream of romance. Cold reason said that the new order of power could not be upturned...'

'Cold reason was right.' She sipped her tea.

'Yet he'd made his stand, hoisted his standard. If nobody rose, his chase for romance was an unseen gesture in a distant empty glen. And why should they hazard their lives? Then just when the mind seemed set to prevail, the primeval sound of the pipes could be heard from the shore, and it was Lochiel casting all care to the wind, leading 700 of his clansmen down from the side of the hill. A way of life led by the heart in revolt against the encroachments of cold reason.'

'But you have to be practical,' Caroline sighed, aware of a disorder, but not yet conscious of it.

'Charlie marched over passes - Corrieyairack, Drummochter - and onwards to Perth with his foes in retreat...'

It was the mouse again. The bloody mouse.

The young American was bent down over his chair, making soft squeaking sounds with his lips, and feeding it pieces of cheese sandwich.

'Oh my God! I don't believe this place!' squealed Ellie in delight. 'I don't believe this place!'

From the table next to them, the chisel-faced woman let out a snort, her mouth wide open, the remains of a meringue scattering like ice debris, onto the scarlet cloth.

Rising from her seat, she summoned the waitress.

'Over here girl! I want to see the manager.'

'Monday is his day off.'

'Manager! I demand to see the manager!'

'Only you can't. He's not here.'

'Now look girl. This shop is overrun by mice. I only live the other side of the Royal Mile. And I'll be back. Then there'll be Hell to pay.' She left in a rage.

The mouse had scampered off down the middle of the room, and the American had returned to his book, oblivious, contented. The waitress collected the pottery plates, indifferent, unaware that in a romantic other world, perhaps she had saved her hero from mortal assault.

'That's the trouble,' said Caroline. 'We long for romance, but in practice you can't let your heart rule your head.'

'Oh, I always do,' said Ellie lightly. 'Mind you, it usually ends in pieces.' She smiled kindly. She was happy. But she became aware that Caroline wasn't.

'So what's up? What's bugging you, buddy?'

Caroline breathed in tensely.

'Oh, it's Fraser, up to his tricks.'

'You mean women - again?'

Her friend nodded.

'Bastard!' Ellie let out, fist clenched.

'He's met this hotelier, young, twenty-eight. The usual - '

'How long?'

'A month? Two months? Oh I don't know...'

'What's she like?'

Caroline looked at her empty tea-cup. She felt drained. Everything seemed draining these days : the effort of keeping things going.

'She's got money, I gather, but no class. I mean, would you believe it? She keeps sending postcards to someone called Charlie... some kind of obscene joke...' She was angry. Angry with Fraser for being a fool. But angrier with Rona. No class. Exactly. She was brutal, crude, like the wilderness trying to break in on their calm ordered world.

Ellie raised her eyebrows.

'He'll get tired of it,' she proposed.

'I don't think so. It seems different this time.'

'Well put your foot down, I would. Tell him you'll leave.'

'He doesn't see he's doing anything wrong. He still comes, he still goes. He's affectionate. That's why I married him...'

'Because he's affectionate?' Ellie checked.

'Sure. But he says he's got these "emotional needs". Just needs to get out, and let them go.'

'What about your emotional needs?' she asked, pointedly.

'My concern is the children, the estate, and holding things together. That's the moral imperative. It's fine to talk about emotional needs, about romance. But you have to cope with the practicalities. And with a family like ours, there are - well - social responsibilities too...'

Ellie noticed that the carefree American, beyond, was constructing a sugar-lump tower while he studied his book. She shook herself back to her friend.

'But what about you, Caroline?'

'That is me. The family, Fraser, the estate.'

'Well if Fraser's going to go after this creep whenever he feels the need, you ought to get out and enjoy yourself too. Let your hair down a bit.'

Caroline had no wish to let down her hair. She needed to keep a firm lid on her feelings, to act reasonably.

The tower was now two lumps wide, nine lumps tall.

'Anyway, I've got an American friend coming to stay. Spending the summer in Britain.'

Ellie nodded, as if to ask, 'Is it him, over there?'

Caroline relaxed, grinning, and lowered her head.

'No, it's Andrew Douglas.'

'Not Douglas! You're kidding!' Ellie almost shouted. And when she had steadied the table, 'So that's why you've been shopping wild!'

'No, no' Caroline insisted seriously.

'Andrew Douglas : you always talked about him like you talked about nobody else...'

'Sure, he was different,' she said thoughtfully. 'It was - special.'

'He was an old university friend, wasn't he? When you were at St Andrews?'

'That was fifteen years ago.'

'Yeah - he'll probably have a walking-stick by now.'

'He won't!' she said defensively.

In fact, he had been a mature student even in those days : a wealthy rancher from Montana, already married with two children. He had come to St Andrews for a while, just for the pleasure of studying.

'What does he look like?'

'Handsome, strong : wiry ginger hair - it's probably greying now - and a kind of rugged, furrowed forehead. He looks like a rancher should, I guess.'

'Spent most of his time mountaineering, from what you've told me?'

'He liked to get out in the hills a bit.'

'So what happened?' Ellie had never pressed the point before, but she intuitively stepped through an opening.

'Well we had, yes, a romance.' Caroline arranged the table again, distractedly. 'We were in love - shit, no - we were lovers. We were beautiful physical lovers...'

'So?' Ellie prised, leaning forward, listening.

'Well it was more than that, you see. To do with beauty. To do with beauty, Ellie. We shared this sense of... I saw it in him. He was, is, a beautiful man, and I felt more alive with him. He brought something out of me, and I felt more alive with him.' Her eyes were moist.

Ellie smiled and held her hand. Caroline felt cross with herself and shook it all off.

'Anyway, he asked me to come out to America and live with him. But there seemed so much to lose : my relatives; our way of life; everything I'd been brought up to; the expectations. There was his family too. She had two young children, for God's sake.'

'And then, within a year, I'd met Fraser.'

Ellie noticed a greying; a passing of years in her friend.

'Could it have worked?'

'Who knows? It wasn't right.' She was tidying her hair, adjusting her dress with her thin arms.

'And his marriage?'

'Later, they split up... and she re-married. He never did. Since then we've kept in touch at Christmas, that sort of thing...'

They settled their bill. And the American sauntered over to see if they'd finished with their sugar.

'So - what's he doing over here?' Ellie continued.

'Said he had a few friends to track down, loose ends to tidy up... I don't know - probably a holiday...'

'Loose ends to tidy up?' Ellie repeated as she gathered her shopping together.

'Yes. He became very involved a few years back with a curious book called "Masquerade". He says he wants to check a number of things. It's all to do with a disappearing hare. Always liked digging about and finding things out.'

'Tell him to come to Kilmartin' she joked half-heartedly.

They got up and made for the door. The rain was still falling and the women were quieter, more thoughtful. The star-struck mouse made a third entry from the wings, but their mood had turned. Caroline frowned disapprovingly, and even Ellie seemed subdued.

It was one come-back too many.

The American called the young waitress, and asked for a fresh pot of tea.

'We don't just do tea,' she resumed.

'You've got the most amazing eyes,' he said gently.

'We don't just do tea,' she insisted.

* * *