Corran pulled her scarf tightly around herself against the wind. The day had looked promising through her guesthouse windows earlier: how could she have forgotten the penetrating chill of a bright Edinburgh spring day? Now, as she hunched against the north wind that swept this bleak rugby field, she thought wistfully of the blossom-laden tree outside her college window in Cambridge.

What on earth am I doing here?

She looked to her left, where her youngest brother, Jack, sat beside her on the wooden bench. As usual he was sketching the scene before him.

‘I don’t know how you can even hold the pencil.’

He grinned at her, his eyes dancing below his untidy fringe. ‘You’ve gone soft in the south,’ he said. ‘This is nothing to home.’

That was true. Home was Thurso, the harbour town perched on the exposed northern edge of mainland Scotland, where the skies were vast and the elements unforgiving. Yet that was a different sort of cold altogether from this grainy wind that picked up the dust of the setts and funnelled between the sooty Edinburgh chimneys. She had grown up with a fresh, cleansing cold, straight from the ever-moving sea. She could almost taste the salt in the air as she thought of that austere grey house where their sister, Stella, was chafing her way through her final months of school with only their mother, Alison, for company.

When the summer days stretched out at both ends, they would return, maybe even Alex too, and the house would come alive with laughter and warmth once more.

She turned her attention to the scene that Jack was sketching. Young pipers from Dr Guthrie’s school entertained eager spectators who had squeezed into every space around the Inverleith playing field. The pipers came to a halt right in front of her. A pause, and a new tune: ‘John Peel’. A roar rose around her from the enormous crowd, and men in white jerseys sprinted onto the pitch. They formed a line and jumped up and down, stretching and bending their legs. The tune changed again, ‘Scotland the Brave’ this time, and it was the turn of the men in navy blue. Corran leant forward to see between the heads in front of her, mouth suddenly dry. At first she couldn’t spot him: they all looked remarkably similar, these men, tall and strong with their short haircuts. But then they formed a semi-circle and there he was. Rob.

Rugby football was his passion but she had never before seen him dressed in the navy shirt with its white thistle proudly sewn on by his own hand two years ago. If I can stitch a wound, I can surely stitch a thistle, he had written to her. Rob the surgeon she knew a little; Rob the student she had known well. But Rob the Scotland rugby player? She wasn’t sure who he was at all, but this weekend she might find out. She watched him take up his position with his teammates, waiting for the whistle to blow. He had told her once that these men were his greatest friends, the brothers he had never known in a sparse and solitary Edinburgh childhood.

An English player punted the leather ball down the field, beginning the game. For Corran, with little interest in sport and a head full of drifting fragments of ancient poetry, the shocking physical onslaught brought thoughts of Achaeans and Trojans, of men setting their faces to battle.

‘They say this might be the biggest crowd ever at a Scotland rugger match,’ said Jack, as he turned to a fresh page and began a rapid sketch of the match in progress. ‘Must be twenty or twenty-five thousand here. It’s quite something really, considering how poorly the Scots have been playing and the slating they’ve had in the papers. There are more English supporters here than I expected too.’

‘I think they were all on my train north,’ Corran said dryly, remembering her cramped journey up from Cambridge the day before, hemmed in by noisy English fans.

‘It was grand of Rob to invite us.’

Corran couldn’t quite share her little brother’s enthusiasm. She had never watched a whole rugby match before, but when she had written to tell Rob she was coming north for a job interview, he had offered to set aside tickets to the Calcutta Cup match. She had agreed a little uncertainly, knowing Jack would love to come. It was good to see her little brother here in the city, where he seemed to be finding his feet at university and even growing into a man. The need to travel south from Thurso to pursue their futures had created its own independence in each of the Rutherford family.

‘Oh, go on, go on!’ Jack was on his feet, as was much of the crowd. But then an enormous groan resonated through the stand, and the energy slid into disappointment.

‘What’s happening?’

‘George Will was nearly over there, but he had a foot in touch. And Pender knocked it on just before. They’re doing so well but they have to take their chances. England won’t give them this amount of field position for long.’

Corran didn’t really understand a word he said, but she could see Rob running back up the pitch. Jack had told her that Rob was a forward and his main role seemed to involve crouching down in the muddy ground and pushing with Herculean effort alongside his teammates while the English tried to push in the other direction. Gaining territory inch by inch. She found she was watching Rob rather than watching the action, and so she was startled when Jack leapt to his feet once more, this time shouting and waving his sketchpad in delight.

‘Did we score?’

‘Didn’t you see? It was Will again, an absolute peach of a pass from Turner. Now Turner will kick for points. What a player he is, I tell you, he’s going to be around for many years to come.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘Ach, he’s missed it. Never mind, this is good, this is so much better than I expected. England don’t know what’s hit them!’

There was certainly a lot of hitting going on. Not fighting exactly, but as man after man was slammed into the ground, Corran wondered how this could be anyone’s idea of pleasure. Meanwhile the pitch, already soggy after yesterday’s rain, was rapidly losing any semblance of green, and it was becoming harder to tell Scotsman from Englishman, so covered in mud were they all. Rob was one of the worst. Where now was the smart young man who had come down to visit her a few times in Cambridge?

It was easy for her mind to drift away from the match and settle on Rob’s last visit. They had shared an unsatisfactory lunch in a stuffy hotel, hampered as always by the strict Cambridge University rules, which prevented Corran as a female student from even walking between classes with a man, never mind entertaining him in the college. Everything had been much more relaxed when they both lived here in Edinburgh, Rob studying medicine and Corran studying classics. But after graduating top of her class, she had won a scholarship to Cambridge to continue her studies. Her three years there were nearly complete, and she really wasn’t sure how she felt about that at all.

There would be no repeat of her Edinburgh graduation, no matter how well she performed: women were not awarded qualifications at Cambridge, and were not allowed to graduate. The unfairness disturbed her, but right now the question of what she was going to do next disturbed her more. Dusty volumes containing the stories of mythical heroes, the beauty and logic and resonance of ancient languages – these had been her world for almost as long as she could remember. At the age of twelve she had told her headmaster she wanted to learn Latin and Greek. Of course not. You are a girl, my dear, and the female brain was not designed for the classics. Encouraged by her parents, she proved them all wrong and loved every minute of it, but now long years of studying were coming to an end. What lay ahead for a woman who had been educated in a subject that her mother’s friends were quick to point out was of no use to man nor beast? The only possible answer was teaching, and so she found herself in Edinburgh, preparing to be interviewed for a lecturer’s post that she wasn’t sure she wanted, and wondering if this man sliding through the mud might offer a simpler future.

The battle had paused.

‘Half time,’ said Jack. The players huddled together in two groups, some bent double to catch their breath. ‘It’s a shame England scored that one before the break. We’ve had the best of the play, but we had the wind behind us. It will be hard going in the second half.’

An older man on Jack’s other side leant in towards them. ‘Aye, lad, we’re missing Wattie Suddie,’ he said. ‘Huggan’s no bad for a first cap, but these muckle English bastards widnae match Suddie’s speed.’

‘Why is he not playing?’ Corran asked, laughing at her little brother’s consternation.

‘Injured, hen. Hurt his ankle agin Wales. Typical Scots luck, to lose oor best wing three quarter. I’m a Hawick man, ye ken. Watched the laddie grow up....