books by alexander mccall smith in the no. 1 ladies’ detective agency series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Tears of the Giraffe Morality for Beautiful Girls The Kalahari Typing School for Men The Full Cupboard of Life In the Company of Cheerful Ladies Blue Shoes and Happiness The Good Husband of Zebra Drive in the isabel dalhousie series The Sunday Philosophy Club Friends, Lovers, Chocolate The Right Attitude to Rain The Careful Use of Compliments in the portuguese irregular verbs series Portuguese Irregular Verbs The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances in the 44 scotland street series 44 Scotland Street Espresso Tales Love Over Scotland The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa alexander mccall smith LOVE OVER SCOTLAND Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the international phenomenon The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is Professor Emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has served on many national and international bodies concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe, and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana. Visit his Web site at www.alexandermccallsmith.com. LOVE OVER SCOTLAND ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH Illustrations by IAIN McINTOSH anchor books A Division of Random House, Inc. New York F I R S T A N C H O R B O O K S E D I T I O N , N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 Copyright © 2006 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn, Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2006. Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in The Scotsman newspaper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–. Love over Scotland / Alexander McCall Smith. — 1st Anchor Books ed. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-38759-2 1. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Fiction. 2. Apartment houses— Fiction. I. Title. PR6063.C326L68 2007 823’.914—dc22 2007022072 Author illustration © Iain McIntosh w w w . a n c h o r b o o k s . c o m v1.0 This book is for David and Joyce Robinson