Alasdair Reid finally got back to Edinburgh that evening, after the fog cleared.

On Wednesday morning, he came into my office with two coffees and shut the door. “Fiona told me everything,” he said. “The declaration. The scoring. Morag's note.” He handed me a coffee. “You did that exactly right, Holly. By the book. I'm proud of you.” “Thank you.”

He sat down.

“Can I tell you something? When the board was looking for a Chief Executive two years ago, some people said you were too young. Too inexperienced. Some of them said you were too…”

“Ordinary?”

He smiled.

“I was going to say ‘local.' But yes. That's what they meant. Not from the right background. Not from London. Not the type.”

He drank his coffee.

“I voted for you because of one thing. In your interview, I asked what you'd do on your first day. Everyone else said they'd meet the investors. You said you'd go and have a cup of tea with the residents of the Kirkgate flats, because they'd been waiting longest.”

He put his cup down.

“That's not ordinary,” he said. “That's the rarest thing in the world.”