Chapter 14: Sable Walks Into the Street at 2 A.M. and Cannot Say Why

The cold came off the stone the way it always does in Edinburgh in November — not falling from the sky but rising from below, from the deep geological patience of basalt and schist that has been waiting since before the city had a name to reclaim the heat of everything built on top of it. Donal had not planned to be out at two in the morning. He had been awake because he was always awake at two in the morning, which was one of the more honest things he knew about himself, and he had gone out because his flat had begun to feel like a question he couldn't stop answering incorrectly.

He was cutting through the Grassmarket, hands in his pockets, collar up, thinking about nothing in particular and everything in general — the specific quality of insomnia that resembles productivity — when he saw her.

She was standing at the junction where Candlemaker Row meets the kirkyard gate, in the yellow wash of a streetlamp, wearing a soft green jumper and dark trousers and no coat. Her arms were at her sides. She was not hugging herself against the cold, which was what anyone would do, which was what every body does when it registers cold even when the mind is elsewhere. She was simply standing, the way a piece of furniture stands, present and motionless and offering nothing.