The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith

dissipated. “People don’t think it wrong to lie any more,” said Elspeth. “They don’t see anything wrong.”
    “Too right,” said the taxi driver.
    They turned off the main road and started to negotiate the series of traffic roundabouts that preceded the terminal.
    “I was only joking back there,” said the driver. “That bit about doing the same thing twice. Only joking.”
    “Of course,” said Matthew.
    “I count the air strokes on my golf card,” the driver went on. “Put them all down. Which is more than some do.”
    “Naturally,” said Matthew.
    They paid and got out of the taxi. “I’m afraid that I don’t believe him,” said Matthew, as they walked through the doors into the terminal.
    Elspeth disagreed. “Why?” she asked. “Why disbelieve him?”
    “I bet that he tried it twice.”
    Elspeth shook her head. “You have to believe people,” she said. “You have to start off by trusting them.” She felt that, of course, but then she thought for some reason of Tofu, and Olive, and of the facility, the enthusiasm, with which they distorted the truth. Bertie was the only completely truthful child she had known, and perhaps Lakshmi. The rest …
    They went to the check-in and handed in their suitcases. The woman behind the desk smiled at them. “Honeymoon?” she asked.
    Matthew showed his surprise. “How did you know?”
    “Because you have that look about you, and …” She paused for effect. “You didn’t say that you were on honeymoon.So many others do. Looking for special treatment. And then you look at the finger, and what do you see? No ring.”
    Matthew glanced at his left hand. So strange; it was so strange, this public declaration of commitment, this announcement of love, made gold in this modest band.
    “We’re going to have such a marvellous time,” he whispered to Elspeth, who looked up at him and said, “Yes.”
    He was thinking of life; she of Australia.

13.
A Poser for Bruce
    Bruce Anderson, erstwhile surveyor and persistent narcissist, had not been invited to Matthew and Elspeth’s wedding, although he had heard about the engagement and had congratulated Matthew – in an ostentatiously friendly way – when they had bumped into one another in the Cumberland Bar one evening.
    Bruce himself was now engaged, to Julia Donald, the daughter of a wealthy hotel owner and businessman, a man who understood Bruce extremely well and had realised that money,and an expensive car, were just the inducements required to get him to marry his daughter. And for her part, Julia understood Bruce too and had realised that what was needed to trap him was not only her father’s inducements but wiles of her own, female wiles involving her unexpected pregnancy – “Such a surprise, Brucie, but there we are!”
    For Bruce, the idea of marriage was not completely without appeal, but it was an appeal that depended on its being distant; imminent marriage, followed by fatherhood, was not what he had had in mind. But when Julia’s father made clear the terms on which he would welcome Bruce into the family – generous ones by any standards – Bruce’s misgivings had been allayed. Perhaps being married to Julia would not be so bad, he thought. He could switch off in the face of constant wittering. Most men did that, he thought, with their wives. And he would never have to worry again about buying a flat – Julia owned a perfectly good flat in Howe Street, worth, Bruce had calculated, at least six hundred thousand pounds at current market prices; and she had no mortgage. In fact, Bruce was not sure if she even knew what a mortgage was; whereas Bruce, like most people, knew very well what a mortgage was and understood the difference between those who had a large mortgage and those who had no mortgage at all. They walked differently, he thought.
    He would also never have to worry about a job now that Julia’s father had made him a director of his property company and given him sole charge of