“By the way, there will be three of us, if that’s ok.” “Who’s the third?” she asked promptly. “Secret. Wait and see.”

“Mmmm – male or female?” She was continually hoping that Mike would settle down with someone but I figured that was a forlorn hope.

“No comment.” We left it at that and I hung up, agreeing that we would be there around noon on Saturday.

Having sorted that one out I thought I would take advantage of the clement weather and go over to Ladybank for a bit of practice. After all, Pierre was away trying out his new clubs and I was damned if I was going to let him beat me when he came back. I also needed to do some thinking about how I would approach question time at the conference.

Thoughts were careering around in my head in random order and I needed to get them straightened out. I’ve found that there are two ways to resolve this kind of a problem, both based on the principle of externalisation – either talk to someone or write them down. Automatically this process forces you to arrange them in some kind of logical order. Having nobody around to talk to and being too lazy to start writing there was only one other alternative – go off and do something completely different and come back to them later.

I decided to go over to the golf course and hit a few buckets of balls. I had recently bought a new driver and it needed getting used to.

Twenty minutes later I was standing on the practice ground with two buckets of balls at my feet and a seven iron in my hands.

A couple of loose swings to warm up the old muscles. Thwack! Reasonably straight, reasonably long, no pulled muscles. I then settled down to my habitual practice procedure. I took all the clubs out of the bag and lent them against the bench behind me and proceeded to warm up for ten minutes or so with a couple of shots with two or three of the short irons, taking plenty of time between each shot. There’s not a lot of point in hurrying. After all out on the course you only hit the ball on average once every two or three minutes. Banging off ten eight irons in less than a minute seems to me to be overdoing it. And who hits two shots, one after the other, with the same club (apart from the putter) – or perhaps the driver if you’ve put the first one out of bounds?

My theory is that you should allow yourself no more than five or six shots with one club, then move on to the next one. I then finish up with the last twenty balls or so as I would probably play a round – perhaps one shot with a four iron, then a seven, followed by a half shot with a wedge.

Thwack! About a hundred and forty yards straight down the middle. That’ll do. Take a different club. Close the face a bit and punch it and watch it keep nice and low, below the wind.

All thoughts of asset management have now evaporated completely. All I see is my little white friend sitting there waiting to be hit, or soaring up into the air designing a perfect curve to fall and bounce on as close as possible to where I intended.

I stop for a few minutes while my imaginary partner is searching in the rough for his wayward drive.

Our green keeper had set up a couple of old rugby poles at a distance of about a hundred and fifty yards and twenty yards apart – that being a reasonable average for the width of a green. At my level of golf nowadays I always aim for the centre of the green. If the hole is near the middle so much the better. If it’s towards one side – too bad. It just means I have a longer putt.

So I line up for the middle of the two poles. That allows me a deviation of ten yards either way to still hit the green. I once calculated that this gives me a margin of error of about plus or minus four degrees off centre if I want to land on the green at that distance. I wish I hadn’t done the calculation because it scares the hell out of me now whenever I line up my shot!

I finish up by going through the bag until I’ve hit three in a row with each club within the bounds of the two poles. Total concentration. Grip, feet, alignment – then empty the brain up in my head of all thoughts that might pollute the other brain – the one down in the gut that knows exactly what to do because he’s done it thousands of times before. I stubbornly try to hit the ball the way I used to thirty years ago. The technique is still there but the body is a lot less flexible and I have to adjust to that. It’s still a great game!

I wearily stack all my clubs back in the bag, lug it over to the car and wander in to the club house for a well-earned beer. Sitting in the bay window overlooking the eighteenth green, watching a ladies foursome earnestly putting out as if the British Open was at stake, I rerun the video of the questions I might ask at the conference and the possible responses. My video could not have imagined the events that were to follow.

I did however have one idea which might be useful. I had a fairly good friend from the past who might be able to help me. We had been regular visitors to each other’s houses when Liz had been alive but when one of the couple is gone there is a tendency to lose touch. George and Helen had, if my memory was correct, a son, Steven, whom we had watched grow up and who had, after university, gone into financial journalism. He was a few years younger than Callum and the last I had heard was that he was working in Edinburgh. It would be interesting to know if he knew anything about AIM.

I got up to leave just as a slightly boisterous foursome came in for their nineteenth hole. I knew two of them quite well, especially the shorter dark-haired, pugnacious looking individual in the plus-fours.

“Morning Keith,” I said in passing. “Morning John. Had a good game?”

“Hallo, Bob. Not leaving are you? Stop a minute and have a drink.”

Keith and John were fellow members of the club with whom I had occasionally played in competitions. They were good enough characters. Keith, or as I should properly refer to as Sir Keith McDowell, was an extremely successful businessman who had taken over his father’s wholesale grocery business and built it up to become the largest chain of supermarkets in Scotland. He had recently been knighted for his success. Short and sturdy, with close cropped dark hair, going grey, he was a vigorous bundle of energy – the kind of man who never walked quietly into a room but bustled in, automatically turning heads. I didn’t know him that well but quite enjoyed his company. He played punchy golf, not much style but extremely competitive, and had a fund of rather dodgy jokes.

John Harris was a good friend who ran a veterinary clinic in the nearby town. Being in the heart of farming country and there being little competition, he had also been very successful in his career. Liz and I had got to know him years ago when we had had a dog and the friendship had developed from there.

The other two were unknown to me but were introduced by Keith as Gavin Reid, his lawyer from Edinburgh, and Peter Gibson. No further identification was volunteered for him.

I agreed to a very quick beer, not wanting to be unsociable. We chatted for a few minutes about our chances in the upcoming Ryder Cup. Peter seemed a harmless enough chap, a bit nondescript. He didn’t have much to say because, as usual, Keith monopolised most of the conversation. The lawyer from Edinburgh didn’t volunteer much. He kept himself rather reserved, in a lawyer’s observation mode. He was a bit overweight and balding. A rather supercilious air about him. His weak chin and round, slightly bloodshot eyes said to me that he probably drank a bit too much. My guess seemed to be confirmed when he ordered a refill – large gin and tonic – before I had even drunk half of my beer.

When I had finished my drink I left them to it, promising to give Keith a call soon to fix up eighteen holes.

“This time I’ll beat you,” he said with his usual competitiveness – half smile, half deadly serious.