Some people can do that. They can just make themselves at home. They can cook a full meal from a tomato and a piece of cheese. One of the things I liked about my husband, when I first met him, was that he knew how to walk uphill with style. I took him, for reasons that now escape me, on an outdoorsy sort of holiday in Scotland. He wasn’t particularly comfortable with things like fishing rods or walking shoes, but he came. Then it turned out that our hotel was closed for another week and that the travel agent had sent a message saying we were coming early and then just gone ahead and decided we were booked in. When we arrived, the whole place—on the tip of a promontory looking out at a black, angry sea—was shuttered and grim. It probably wasn’t the most welcoming spot even in the summer, all dressed grey stone and narrow windows to keep out the weather, but in the cold and dark of a February evening with a storm blowing in off the Atlantic it was like something from a horror film. We sat in the car park and waited, and finally the caretaker came and let us in and gave us weak tea and four candles for light. He didn’t know if the hotel would open for us. It was a Sunday, of course, and in the north of Scotland they still take Sunday pretty seriously. The caretaker was wearing his church best, so he looked like a vampire’s butler. He went out into the storm, coat flapping and snapping, and the door closed with a colossal bang. The candles went out, and of course we didn’t have any matches.