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Matthew looked at Catriona with interest. He had met her only once before, and she had not made much of an impression on him then. That was possibly because they had exchanged no more than a few words, and he had found out nothing about her. He had not anticipated that she would talk about light and the paintings of Edward Hopper – both subjects in which Matthew had an intense interest and which he rarely had the opportunity to discuss in any depth. Most people, in his experience, thought very little about light – they took it for granted, or, at best, were only dimly aware of how important it was for mood and for perception – for everything, really. And now here was Catriona, with her slightly unnerving blue spectacles, raising the subject of light, when he had imagined they might by now be emmeshed in the sort of small talk that characterised Edinburgh dinner parties and from which there was sometimes little relief or prospect of escape.