Hi.

I felt his awareness, his trace of amusement, but having never found myself in anybody’s head before I wasn’t sure of the correct response.

I’m Rob, he said. You’re new here?

This time I replied, a little hesitant, and told him, Yes.

The sailing boat was still drifting on the screen, but my view angled sharply down instead, away from it, and I found myself looking the length of a plain black shirt buttoned across a flat male stomach, a simple black belt and, stretched casually out in the chair below that, lean athletic legs covered in snug-fitting denim, and the scuffed and rounded toes of black Doc Martens.

His hands were laced, relaxed, across his stomach, and I saw the gold glint of a signet ring, a small one, on his right hand’s little finger. They were nice hands, square and capable. Nice legs, too, come to that.

My view came up again and focused on the little sailing boat and the willow and the swans. He told me, You be sure now to tell Dr Fulton-Wallace what I’m wearing.

And with that, he very gently pushed me out again.

I don’t know what I looked like when they finished with the test, untaped my eyes and took the headphones off, but Dr Fulton-Wallace seemed concerned. ‘I thought you might have felt unwell,’ she said, ‘when you stopped talking.’

I reassured her I was fine. A little stunned, perhaps, and strangely tired from such a minor effort, but I dutifully told her, ‘I’m supposed to tell you what he’s wearing.’

She paused in the middle of tidily winding the cords of the headphones. ‘I’m sorry? What who’s wearing?’

‘Rob. The man in the other room.’

Setting the headphones down, she exchanged a quick glance with her assistant before giving me her full attention, warily. ‘What is he wearing?’

I described the clothes I’d seen and finished with the signet ring. She jotted all the details down, then taking out her mobile dialled a number. ‘George? It’s Keary, here. Who are you using at your end, today? Oh, right. And what’s he wearing?’ Here she paused, and briefly smiled at her associate’s reply. ‘Yes, that’s very funny, but my interest is professional. Just tell me what he’s wearing.’

As she listened, I could see her smile give way to incredulity. She said, ‘Do me a favour: take a picture of him, will you? Yes, again, very funny. Just please take the picture? Thanks.’

Shaking her head she rang off, but the tone in her voice was admiring. ‘The devil,’ she said.

It would be two more weeks before I met Rob face-to-face, both of us in the same room. I’d been heading down south for a weekend at home, and not ten minutes after we’d pulled out of Waverly Station my train unexpectedly stopped.

In the midst of the murmured confusion that followed, the elderly woman who’d taken the window seat next to me glanced out the window and said, ‘Oh, I do hope there’s not been an accident.’

I’d reassured her, ‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘Debris on the line,’ said the young man just over the aisle from us, his quiet voice certain. ‘We’ll not be here long.’

It surprised me that I hadn’t noticed him earlier. I usually didn’t miss noticing good-looking men. And on top of it all, he’d been reading a book, and a man doing that didn’t often escape my attention.

He sent us a friendly look, lifted his book and went on reading. The Dead Zone by Stephen King. I felt my mouth curve. The story of a man who has the curse of seeing visions of the future life of anyone he touches. Rather the reverse of my own curse, but I could sympathise.

The young man reading seemed to like it well enough. He looked absorbed, his dark head bent so that one wave of hair fell just beside his eye, his jeans-clad legs stretched out as much as possible in that cramped space, one foot edged slightly out into the aisle. He was wearing black Doc Martens, and on seeing them my first unguarded thought was, Oh God, wouldn’t it be great if he was Rob.

The thought just hung there for a moment, then incredibly he raised his head and looked at me and grinned, and I turned twenty shades of red.

‘I’m Rob McMorran,’ he said, lowering the book again and holding his place with his thumb while he held out his right hand, the hand with the narrow gold signet ring on the last finger.

I slammed my defences in place before braving the handshake, and kept it brief. ‘Nicola Marter.’

And that was the start of it. By the time the train got underway again I’d learnt that he was a police constable, coming up on six years in the force, and that he didn’t live in Edinburgh but journeyed up from Eyemouth in the Borders; that he drove most times, except his car had broken down two days ago so he’d been forced to use the train, a minor hassle since the train didn’t actually stop in Eyemouth. ‘The nearest stop’s Berwick,’ he’d told me, ‘in England, and then you get into a taxi, turn round and come over the border again.’

‘Well, at least it’s not a fortified border,’ I’d consoled him, ‘with guards and wire.’

‘It should be.’ His tone had been dry, but his eyes had been mischief. ‘They’re nothing but trouble, the English.’

‘We are not. We’re wonderful people.’

‘Oh, aye? Will you prove it, then? Give us a len of your mobile.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He’d held out his hand and rephrased. ‘May I borrow your mobile? Mine isn’t working.’