"We are very different people," she tells me, as the two of us are sat in the front room of the house in Bradford that I've visited for not far short of their forty years together and now feels like a second home to me.
"I noticed," I say. "He's a bit of a prat for a start."
"He is," she says. "Which is why the two of you get on."
"He and I have a lot in common."
"But he and I don't," she says, giving the cat that's just wandered into the elegantly decorated room a tickle, and getting a rumbling purr in return. "That's my point."
On my last visit, when this hairy moggy had wafted into the room, his tail held high, a friend of Iain's had blurted out, "What a wonderfully fluffy pussy."
I'd spluttered drink and sprayed the feline with an aromatic mist of fine Ardbeg. He liked it and has rubbed against my leg with greater ardour ever since. It's a memory that makes me smile but a dangerous distraction from Molly's conversation.
"Sorry?" I say.
"I said take cooking dinner," she repeats with a tinge of asperity. "With me it's fast and functional. I make the meal and clean up as I go. Iain is different. He turns it into a major production. First he puts on that terrible, wailing blues he listens to, like Arabs burying their dead. Then he dives into the kitchen.
"Five hours later he surfaces with something that smells and tastes incredible and is laid out like a gorgeous work of art. But behind him he's left a scene of terrible devastation, like a Scotch invasion of the football pitch at Wembley."
"Bottles of whisky have never invaded Wembley," I say and instantly regret it. But it's too late to back off so I chunter brainlessly on. "The word you're groping for I suspect is 'Scottish'."
"The word you're groping for I suspect is a clip round the ear," she says, reminding me she is not a woman to be taken lightly, something Iain learned long ago and one reason, no doubt, that their relationship lasted.
There are others. Complementary qualities seems to work in a marriage. Molly is a kind, chatty, no-nonsense homemaker and former career woman in a man's world. Iain is philosophical and funny, with bulging brains but a tenuous grip on everyday detail.
He once drove all the way to Scotland to scatter his mum's ashes, but forgot the ashes. I could just picture her, back on his living-room mantelpiece, shaking her head in long-suffering resignation.
"You're not listening any more, are you?" Molly says.
"I'm getting nostalgic," I say. "I like it here and I'm a bit strapped for cash right now. How about I move in with you until I get back on my feet again?"
"What?" she says, her complexion, always pale, going several shades paler.
"Iain and I are very alike, as you said, so you wouldn't even notice there were two of us. When one came into a room the other would leave. That way you'd only ever get one prat at a time."
"I need a whisky," she says, standing up and clutching her forehead.
"You don't drink," I say.
"Only in emergencies," she says and totters theatrically out of the door.
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