A butterfly flapped its wings and I caught my toe on a cobblestone. Spinning left round the corner rather than straight on, and struggling for balance, I became aware of images: her nose pressed into the windowpane of that second-hand bookshop, her intense, almost child-like concentration, the shape of her legs between black ankle boots and short black coat. Just images, just mind photos, but also something more; some instinct deeper than desire which made me stand at Julia's side and follow her gaze through the bookshop window.

Aligning my sight with hers, I saw she was looking over the first row of books towards a worn copy of MacDonell's Sanskrit-English Dictionary. This was unexpected, not to say extraordinary, not only because she seemed to be studying the MacDonell, albeit at a distance, but that the bookseller should have put it in the window. Apart from me and our cadaverous (though most eminent) Professor Pilikian, no one in St Andrews had the least interest in the subject, certainly none of my students. I immediately realized that the bookseller, an otherwise astute individual, must have been moved by forces more powerful than he himself understood. I took this as a favourable portent.

A hazy image shimmered in the air in front of the MacDonell, the reflection of Julia and myself in the glass. We were standing apart, but not the distance of strangers, closer, in the same frame, as if some tenuous post- MacDonell connection now existed between us, a connection that reinforced a growing feeling within me that the universe, for once in its life, might be on my side.

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but are you interested in the Sanskrit dictionary?'

She turned towards me, her eyes fixed on mine, green and pale like spring leaves caught by frost. 'Me? That Sanskrit dictionary?' She pointed. I nodded. 'Erm, not really. I was looking in that general direction, it's true, and was vaguely aware of it, but I wouldn't say I was interested. In fact, I was thinking of something else altogether.'

'Oh ... sorry to have disturbed you. I hope you don't mind. It's just that for a moment I thought I recognized the look.'

'The look?'

'The dead language look.'

'And what sort of look is that, exactly?'

'Open ... reflective ... far-sighted ... broke.'

'Well, I'm certainly broke,' she said laughing. 'And, as it happens, I was thinking of something from an ancient language.'

'You were,' said I, much encouraged by the turn things had taken, 'what, if I may ask?'

'Something from ancient Icelandic, an old poem.'

'Really. I don't think I've ever heard ancient Icelandic. Could you recite a line or two?'

'Gáttir allar, áðr gangi fram / um scoðaz scyli / um scygnaz scyli / þvíat óvíst er at vita, hvar óvinir / sitia á fleti fyrir.' No preamble, her voice alive in melodious chant, her eyes almost closed. Then her lids lifted and I saw the dawn.

'That's lovely. What does it mean?'

'It means, "Before passing through a doorway, look carefully. There may be enemies on the other side."'

I laughed, both at the sentiment and at the way she seemed to suck the words before letting them go. 'You're not exactly Scottish, are you?' I said.

'No, not exactly.'

I waited.

'Born Provideniye. Left for the West. Now I am here.'

It seems so long ago — before my mother's funeral, before Detective Sergeant McCorquodale, before the first box was opened and my blood's secret came dripping out — that day when I first met Julia, when I ran back to my flat and looked up Provideniye, arctic cold, bedraggled and god- forsaken as it seemed to be.

And yet providence might never have had a chance, had not Séamus announced his discovery of a new pub on the outskirts of town. 'Rouse yourself, Stephen,' he exhorted. 'The stout they serve in there, it's good stuff alright, as fine as I ever drank.' Though I sincerely doubted there'd be the slightest discernible difference between this and most of the other stuff that had gone down the wee man's throat in the time I'd known him, I said I'd meet him there. So, I was walking out past St Salvator's and into the Big Quad with its old stone and its lecture theatres and there she was, Julia, her books under her arm, another girl with her and the pair of them all lit up. I've no idea what they were talking about but it was enough to have them both holding on to each other's arms and laughing with that infectious mixture of humour and goodwill which you hear in the laugh of young women and — improbable though it may sound — hyenas. Then they stopped suddenly, kissed on both cheeks, goodbye goodbye, and the other girl, glancing sharply at her watch, turned and left.

I moved closer casually, doing my best not to appear to sidle (hyena-like) but, rather, as if lost in my own thoughts. When I was almost upon her, I looked up and said, 'Oh. Hello. It's you.'

'It is,' she replied. Whether she had noticed my approach or not, I wasn't sure.

'You must be a student,' I suggested, 'you know, being here, in the Quad. With the students. Are you an undergraduate, a postgraduate or something else altogether?'

'I think I must be something else altogether,' she replied and a broad smile sent little wrinkle lines of pleasure wandering down her nose. 'I go to lectures which interest me.'

'And did this one?'

'The Songs of Odin are always interesting.'

'And always enemies on the other side of the door?'

'Sometimes. Not always.'

'Sometimes friends?'

'Sometimes.'

'That's a relief,' I said. 'Would you feel safe then in entering a coffee shop with me?'

'Relatively,' she replied laughing. I would have liked to link arms with her as we walked but thought better of it.

'Sanskrit?' she queried. 'Strange choice, isn't it? Why?'

A simple question but, as I would come to understand, the truth of intimate things is never simple. 'I can't say precisely but I was always drawn to it ... family connections ... my mother.'

'Your mother knows Sanskrit, does she?'

'That's the last thing she'd learn. Much too close to what she tries to forget.'

Julia looked at me as if noticing something she hadn't noticed before. 'Is she Scottish?'

'Half.'

'And her other half?'

'Indian.'

And then, because Julia widened her eyes expecting more — an appeal I couldn't resist — I added, 'She's spent her life bleaching out the dark stains on her genes.' My index finger made screw-turns into my temple.

Perhaps the indicators of insanity are universal because this signing seemed to mean something to her. Laughing, her eyes pointing skyward, she said, 'So your half-white mother is also half-mad?'

'Let's just say she has problems with reality.'

'Well, it's common enough. Not in Provideniye. When reality is as harsh as it is there, you can't escape it. But, here, there are too many distractions, don't you think, too many ways of turning away from what's real.' She tapped her chest. 'You know, real on the inside, I mean.'

I said nothing. My mother and her distractions; that was a subject in itself, but not one I wanted to think about, not then, not with Julia.

'Where is your mother now?' she continued.

'She lives in Dundee ... where I was born. Though I don't see her much now. Hardly ever really.' And then I added, I don't know why, the words I hoped were true. 'The fact...